Always A Way
by Heddwig
Summary: Rose returns to the TARDIS leaving the Doctor suddenly very oblivious to Rory and Amy; will they get along or will her return only cause misery for all on board? (Rated M for possible mature scenes to come; previously known as 'Doomsday')
1. Rose

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

"Doctor, who is she?" The redhead with long hair asks bluntly, looking back and forth at the Doctor and the strange blonde woman who randomly materialized inside of the TARDIS. Both Amy and Rory were stunned, to say in the least, and looking at the Doctor's face for any helpful clues as to who the stranger is didn't help the two of them at all. If anything, it left them with more questions. He mentioned past companions he's travelled with of course, mentioned all of their names-

"...Rose..." the Doctor says, just above a whisper, cutting into Amy and Rory's thoughts.

-Except for hers, now that they think about it, remembering the day he sat them down and told him about those who ventured into time and space with him much like Amy and Rory do today.

"Rose!" The Doctor exclaims suddenly, blurting her name out as if his mind had just caught up with what his eyes are seeing. Within the span it takes someone to blink once, he had bolted full-on sprint toward this strange woman named Rose leaving Amy and Rory to exchange funny glances before putting their attention back on the now embracing pair. "Oh Rose, my Rose, my pink and yellow Rose!" He's trying so hard not to cry but his voice shakes and dips though he acts as if it otherwise didn't happen.

"Doctor?" Amy says, trying to get his attention but he seems to have forgotten that Amy and Rory are behind him, still standing in front of the part of the console that could be seen from the entryway of the TARDIS. When he still doesn't acknowledge their existence, the married pair decide to approach the reunited couple that now speak in spoken whispers.

Suddenly, the Doctor cries out from enthusiasm and throws his head back, a grin on his face.

"You've never told us about her..." Rory observes aloud, scrunching up his eyebrows in thought as he looks at the blonde some more, seeing that she looked to be around their age-give or take a few years-but she looked marvelous nonetheless.

"Well of course I haven't!" The Doctor turns away from Rose, hearts frantically pounding, as he stares at the two behind him. "You never asked..."

"We didn't know you left one out!" Amy remarks, aghast that he would say such a thing. "We thought you told us about everyone you've travelled with!" Amy points out then, folding her arms across her chest, a smug look on her face.

Whoever this Rose is, how come he thought they didn't deserve to know? Or did he forget? But judging from how he was reacting, Amy figured he never forgot. Then why hadn't he told them? He was the one who decided he should tell them just about every-bloody-thing, so why not include this Rose?

"Hello..." Rose says softly but awkwardly, a smile on her face after flattening for a brief moment; she didn't appreciate the tone that redhead was using though she could understand. The Doctor could be quite daft at times.

"Ah, can this wait?" The Doctor interjects, looking between Rose and Amy whom were both looking at him. Rory was staring at Rose, not aware that the others had moved on, as he was still trying to figure out exactly where the name Rose rung a bell.

Shocked, Amy's jaw drops as she stares at the Doctor, trying her best to give him a squinty-eyed look that didn't seem to faze him one bit.

"Doctor? Aren't you going to introduce me?" Rose gets his attention by easing her hand onto his shoulder, not quite used to his new look.

"Nah," the Doctor waves them off and takes hold of the hand Rose had just rest upon him and pulled her away, into the corridors of the TARDIS, talking loudly as they went. "That-_they_ can wait..."

_They've done their waiting, they can wait longer_, he thinks dryly, thinking of Rory, the Roman, and Amy, the Girl Who Waited, as he kept his eyes set on the path he wanted to go.

Back in the console room, Amy gave Rory a very deadly look that made it clear she was upset that the Doctor was being very dismissive.

"What the bloody _hell_ was that?" They ask in union, turning to face the direction the Doctor had pulled Rose off to.

* * *

**A/N:** Lots of explaining, I know.


	2. Doors

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

"Oi!" Amy calls out to the fleeing man as she got onto her tip-toes and leaned whichever way that would best show him from where she stood. If she wasn't mistaken, then she definitely saw the Doctor wave a hand through the air as if he were dismissing her. So she tries again, not sure if that wave was meant for her or one of his more dramatic movements, perhaps dismissing something Rose said or a lunatic idea. Whatever the reason, Amy tries again: "Doctor!"

"I don't think I like her very much," Amy deducted, barely seeing him round a corner with another, more urgent, wave of his hand. Looking yander until he disappeared from sight, Amy stood flat on her feet and gave Rory an expecting glance over her shoulder-expecting him to understand and to agree. When he pursed his lips and shrugged, obviously not wanting to provide any kind of input, Amy gushed out a sigh. "I've yet to meet a woman that could do that to him...except for, well, you know..."

"River." Rory nods, remembering the short visits with their daughter (which still was very odd; Rory didn't think he would ever adjust to that).

"I wonder what River will think of this..." Amy trails off.

* * *

After guiding her through the labyrinth of corridors clustered with doors, leaving her with the slightest impression that he had gotten just as lost as she was beginning to feel, the Doctor came to a stop in front of a fancy-looking door. By fancy, it could only be described, as Rose thought it to appear, the most strongest and thickest of all wooden things back on Earth. The handle was similar to a front door's, a handle and a slot to slip a key into; this intrigued Rose as she watched the Doctor rummage through his pockets (no doubt, bigger on the inside!) as she had a nostalgic moment, remembering how the TARDIS looked when she was around.

"How...how..._how_ did you do that?" The Doctor finally asked when he pushed open the door with no effort at all but when Rose went to close it upon entering the room, she had to use all of her weight just to get it to close! _Some wood_, she thought sourly. How could he push it open with no struggle at all? Like it was some feather animated to look like a grand, wooden door! It was bloody heavy.

"How did I what?" Rose answers with a question, turning to face him as soon as she heard the click of the door shutting behind her. She leaned against the door, placing her hands behind her back. She knew what he was asking but she figured that by prolonging their visit, she could have a few more seconds of being with just him. "Close the door?" A playful smile comes onto her face and the Doctor mocks her before taking three distinctly large steps toward her, his torso inflating as hers deflates and vice versa.

"No, you..." _stupid ape_, "How did _you_ get _here_?" The Doctor rephrased his question and looked back and forth at her eyes, enjoying the neverending plethora of stories her deep eyes told. "What did you do to get here? You...you shouldn't be here, so how are you here?"

Rose inhaled before letting out a slow sigh, bowing her head and narrowing her eyes, finally realizing just how close he was to her. Unable to think straight, Rose takes a side step and walks further into the room. _His_ room.

* * *

At random, while Amy and Rory were discussing the Doctor and that blonde beauty named Rose, Rory shoots up into a standing position, pushing his glasses up on his nose, and blatantly declared: _Ah ha!_

He had a slight eureka episode as his mind put all the puzzle pieces together: Rose, her vague appearance that had a weighing presence on his thoughts, and it made sense. He had seen a door that was matte-looking but shined in glory.

Pulling onto Amy's hand, begging her to follow him so that she could understand her husband. One quick glance down to Amy, where she sat, told Rory all that he needed confirmed; she was bloody confused and his sudden spurt wasn't helping _anything_.

Then, just as the Doctor had done with Rose only moments earlier, Rory tugs Amy along with his arm, a deah grip on her wrist, as he takes off toward the archway that then split into many hallways.

Once he came across it, the door that was striped vertically with pink and lavender, Rory tapped just beneath the engraved name on the door that said: _ROSE MARION TYLER_. Beneath that was a circle that Rory could assume was the Doctor's home language and as obvious as it seemed, Rory couldn't say what it meant.

"Rose's door!" He says enthusiastically, proud of himself for finally remembering, as he looks at Amy who's standing at his side now, arms crossed over her chest. "We walked past it so many times! Do you remember?"

Giving her head a shake, Amy said 'no' more so to herself than to him.

Huffing, Rory glowered at her for a moment before putting his attention back on the door with a white door handle shaped much like a diamond, the keen point nearly pricking his palm as he reached for it. Within milliseconds, he was completely unaware of what the TARDIS intended to do before it was too late.

The TARDIS delivered a quick zap to Rory's hand before he even had a chance to twist the knob fifteen degrees. Pulling his hand back quickly, shaking it while sucking in a breath through grit teeth, he yelped an '_ow_'.

"What?" Amy asked, oblivious to the electric shock the TARDIS just gave her husband.

"She shocked me."

"Who did?"

"The TARDIS."

"The TARDIS?"

"Yeah, the ship."

"The ship?" Amy's tone was very much full of doubt and a slight hint of amusement.

Staring at her before looking down at his hand, examining it, and found only a slight crimson tinge.

_Bloody ship._

"Rory..." Amy began to whine (she was reluctant to agree with him), closing her eyelids while leaning her head back. She's just about had it today with all of this madness, and if Rory was going mad and got anywhere as mad as the Doctor, then she didn't know what she would do.

Returning his gaze to Amy, just now picking up on her disbelief, Rory grew frustrated and pulled her hand toward the door, hovering it close enough to feel what he hadn't. "All right then, you try it since you don't believe me."

For a moment, Amy thought she could hear the snaps and cracks of the electricity flowing through the doorknob but realized, just in time, that it was in fact alive with energy. "...No, I believe you." She says after a while, grumbling in spite of herself. A part of her was curious, as always, to test out theories with a sole purpose of proving or denying it as rubbish but she wasn't as foolish as Rory anyway.

Letting her arm fall back to her side, a sign of resignation, before crossing her arms over her chest again. The TARDIS and the Doctor were both equally hiding something and it was just as frustrating, if not more so, that Rory and she were unable to find answers. But Amy was determined, she has grown tired of waiting (first twelve years then thirty-six) and this childish nonsense did nothing for her except spike her interest further.

"We're going to see whatever's behind that door," Amy states with strong, unwavering determination both audible in her voice and clearly seen on her face. Rory noted, from all the years he's known her, that she has many faces to represent how she feels and what she's thinking.

Grinning like a career criminal with a brilliant plan, both Amy and Rory navigated the long hallways and went back into the console room where they began to plot their conniving plan.

Whatever it is about that Rose Marion Tyler, the eloped couple are determined to uncover all of it.

* * *

"Dimension cannon." Rose says brutally and coldly, voice already steeling over as memories plummeted into her head and beckoned to give her another painful headache. The Doctor, who was pacing around with his head bowed, looked up in surprise and then stepped toward her, leaning down so they could be eye level. Rose decided to sit down a while ago, her feet sore from the constant standing-she's hardly had a complete, restful, hour to just sit and give her feet a break.

Looking disappointed that her explanation was so brief, the Doctor turns her head one way then another to make sure no head trauma of any kind occurred during her rough travel. "Well that can't be it, Rose, I thought you were happy with the human version of me?" His voice lowers at the mention of him, clearly expressing his distaste for the copy.

"Yeah, I was, don't get me wrong, Doctor but...things got in the way."

"What kind of things?" The Doctor stopped his pacing, having resumed after his prior statement, and abruptly turned to face her-just missing her sad facial expression, having turned seconds too late.

"I'd rather not..." Rosie's voice is solemn and there's a hint of despair which validated the Doctors assumption: something is wrong.

"Rose," the Doctor comes to his knees and peers at her, his eyebrows went funny-his way of showing concern and a chuckle nearly escaped Rose's mouth. He hardly had any eyebrows! She just noticed that and he looked funny, like those models she saw on the telly with barbaric-looking foreheads!

"Rose?" One corner of his mouth lifts up when he saw the amusement cross her face much like a train, not once questioning her sanity and quick changes of mood. _What's happened to her?_, the Doctor think and almost muses aloud but catches himself, pressing his lips together-as if that would stop him.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me."

Then silence fell, covered them like a veil to conceal the face of a mourning widow at her lovers burial. The silence was everlasting, miserable and infinite in the worst way because words would not breach past her lips and the Doctor could only wait, just as he had for nearly five years now... In a way, waiting for her to speak reminded him of her second, (and what he thought to be) final departure; he waited for her to come back, and continued to hope even though he had Amelia, wonderful Amelia Pond, and Rory the Roman, oh and River! Glorious, feisty River!

Third time's the charm..., right?

Then he saw her lips move, a seconds delay without sound, and he thinks she was battling any emotion that threatened to pull her back into their abyss. She began to speak, she began explaining to him the loss of them all as they tried to fight back but they were outnumbered and unsuccessful. Somehow, thanks to the Meta-Doctor (or John, as he liked to be called), she was able to escape before he, too, was killed by a wandering Dalek.

_They returned? To her universe? BUT HOW?_

Somewhere in the middle of explaining the never ending funerals, her brief recollection of her wedding day, and her single-handedly reinventing the dissension cannon, Rose fell apart. She slid down to her knees and was a gross mess of tears and snot as the Doctor wrapped his arms around her and rocked her back and forth, shushing her like she were an infant.

"...They killed him, D-D-Doctor..." Rose kept repeating, words muffled into his tweed jacket as her fingers clawed into his arms, grabbing onto him in any way she could. All she could see was his handsome face as his human self and then those memories started to infuse with the ones when she travelled with the Doctor, starting at when she was eighteen. His goofy, wild-looking face that quirked an eyebrow when something sparked his interest and his brown suits, and crazy hair that had a life of its own. Then, his leather jacket and hair cut close to his scalp, with his enchanting blue eyes that told her many things, even the darker thoughts he never mentioned a word of.

And their wedding, it was so beautiful and darling, loosely set up to resemble the TARDIS when it had coral pillars that stopped at the ceiling just as the time rotor had. The dresses worn by bridesmaids was a deep, bright blue that greatly resembled the outer appearance of the TARDIS.

* * *

It was ironic when John suggested the cake look like a Dalek because not too soon after, months really, a fleet of Daleks came to Pete's universe having mistaken John to be the Doctor. Though by his mind and personality he was the Doctor, he wasn't and they came. They didn't listen to their protests, having gone through the archive in their mind and matched John's face with the Doctor's.

"Curse of the Time Lords..." John had said, his tone chipper, as Rose and himself sought safety underground at Torchwood as soon as they realized the others couldn't be saved.

Not finding his odd humor to be funny, Rose reached to grab the sleeve of his suit jacket and willed him to a stop, a somber look suddenly on her face, replacing the fear and giddy anxiety. "Don't say that," she pleaded and stepped close to him, aware that a Dalek wasn't too far behind but they had time. They always had time and space. He promised her that, just like she promised forever.

"Oh Rose, my darling Rose...Defender of the Earth..." A sad smile plays on his features as he brushes the pad of his thumb against her cheek and mouth that had gone slack. She looked just as helpless as she felt. Surely there was a way, there always was. He adored the expression on her face, her lips that felt as soft as they looked, her brown eyes that burned with compassion and intensity. His Rose, all his at last even though he knew her heart still belonged to the alien with two hearts instead of one.

But this moment, this last exchange between them, fooled him into thinking that there was a chance she loved him and not the Doctor.

"Don't talk to me like you're going to die, you're not going to die." Rose declared and took hold of his hand, darting off but was pulled back, almost falling onto her bum, where John remained still much like stone. "John, c'mon, we can make it...the doors just that way..." She gestured with her free hand toward the door that promised to protect them against Daleks, even an entire planet of those creatures bred with such hate, and tugged at his hand. She was desperate but she dare not let go of his hand, afraid that by doing so would cause him to die right then and there...as if her hope was keeping him alive. And though he could never admit it, it was, her standing there as she tried and tried to persuade him into believing they could make it did keep him alive. It kept him from running toward the Dalek, all to spare Rose.

"Doctor," she persisted and had an angry, determined look in her eyes. She hadn't realized she said his name, his name that he's been known by for centuries, and John loved that. He loved her so much, if he had his other heart...he was sure it would beat just as fast as his current one.

Right then and there, he embraced her tightly and crushed his lips against her fuller ones, leaning down as she got on her toes to meet him halfway. They remained like that, arms around each other for the last time, as they kissed with fierce passion. The Dalek was closer now as it spoke, saying _'exterminate'_ many times, as if the mere sight of John was causing his non-existent anger to rise.

"How long will you stay with me?" John whispers into her ear, knowing that when he pulled away from their kiss (though he didn't want to, knowing it would be his last) that he left her in a daze, paralyzing her thoughts, being caught off-guard. She was so intent on saving him, she didn't think about herself.

"Forever..."

"Then go." He gives her a shove, watching her run off reluctantly, looking back frequently to keep him in her sights.

Nearing the door that was light to open but hard to penetrate, Rose stopped just as she had so many years ago when she knew the Doctor who dressed in leather and black, when she first came across a Dalek. Turning around, muttering an apology she knew his alien self would hear if that were him there instead of John, and stared at John just as he stared at her with such longing in his eyes; not a single hint of bitterness and regret.

Then there was a flash and she could see his skeleton as he fell, limp, to the ground. Alarmed, everything moving at a more rapid speed than what it felt like earlier, Rose's breath hitched and every nerve in her body went into overdrive-surging with adrenaline, influenced by fear and excitement. Changing her quick glances back and forth at the Dalek and John, she whipped around and entered a passcode native to only her and leapt into the dark, dank room as if her anticipation couldn't take the agony anymore.

"EXTERMINATE!"She could hear the Dalek's monotonous voice raising with frustration as its beams were absorbed by the door she had pushed shut, eager to separate herself from such a cruel..._thing_.

Behind her, there was buzzing and flickering as if lights were turning on; Rose noticed it was looking suddenly a lot brighter than it was when she first entered. At first she thought it was only her eyes adjusting, having gotten used to the spinning yellow lights and the red EXIT signs paving the path for John and her.

Turning around slowly, hesitantly, with the expectation of being ambushed by four dozen Dalek's waiting in the room she had imagined to be small. Shivering, Rose's eyes looked at everything in her path and there was nothing, just emptiness and a lot of white that glowed brighter where the illuminated lights above were placed. Turning her shoulder to get a better look at the door now at her back, she remembered Pete mentioning Mickey made sure the passcode would be locked up so well that not even the Dalek's Emperor could get to it himself!

Putting her attention back on what now is front of her, Rose took small steps forward and exhaled; if John were here, he would be running his improvised sonic screwdriver, made from scraps of alien technology, all over the place-because an empty room wouldn't just be empty, especially at this large scale. What was it hiding? _John would know,_ Rose thought.

"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" The chanting, as several Dalek's now waited on the other side of that door, cut into Rose's thoughts which made her loathe those horrible things! She didn't even want to recognize them as _creatures_ because they were ranked lower than that, the only title they deserved was '_thing_'.

Blimey, they wouldn't even allow her to properly mourn her now deceased husband who lay, _dead_, on the other side where those horrible monsters kept trying to destroy the door. This, hearing their stupid gunstick shoot beam after beam after _beam_ at the door only for it to be absorbed, caused her to cackle maniacally because it was ludicrous. All of it was absolutely insane. It wasn't brilliant or fantastic, the two words John often used in spite of danger and malevolence.

"SHUT UP!" Rose wails, turning to scream at the door as tears caused her to choke, salty water spilling over her bottom eyelids like a massive flood.

Everyone, everyone she could possibly love, died while she got to live. It was bloody miserable. And she couldn't mourn them because those Dalek wanted her dead as well, she had no time to grieve.

"Shut up!" Rose's voice is quieter, much quieter, as she crumples to her knees and hits her hands on the white ground-oblivious to the sliver of ripples echoing not too far from her.

When it stopped, when it became quiet, when she could feel time come to a still as if it too were weeping for the loss of all of them-John, the most-Rose lifted her head from crying onto the ground, hands soaked with the moisture that drenched her face. Faintly she could see it, if she squinted hard enough, and to test it out herself, she stood up and jumped as high as she could and watched.

The ripples extended from the ground up, covering something that wanted to remain hidden. Flustered, Rose stepped toward the object and felt around. Her searching hands thumped against it, now patting the mysterious object to get a general idea of what it could be.

Looking all around, in need of some clues as to what this thing is, until her eyes came across it that at first, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. The room is so white that to some passerby, it might not have been noticed but she saw it and rushed toward it, bumping against the object that was increasing in side as she tried to navigate around it.

Tugging the paper away from the wall it was taped to, Rose read its messy scrawl and understood it to be John's and an unsure grin came on her face.

_Dearest Rose Tyler-Smith,_ it started before jumping down into an indentation to continue, _my darling Rose. If you're reading this, I'm most certainly dead and this is a failsafe. Call it my human emergency protocol. (Doesn't quite compare to my projections, huh?)_

To which Rose responded with a brief shake of her head, letting out a giggle.

_In this room, is the dimension cannon. I've not yet finished tinkering with it yet, and sadly I'll never be able to, though I hope you can pick up where I left off. Now Rose, you brilliant, fantastic, _wonderful_ human being, I have no doubt in my mind. You have the intelligence to finish it, I know you do, my darling Rose._

_Rose, oh, Rose._

He signed it off with _John Smith_, an alias he had taken to liking very much as a full-time human Time Lord; but in parentheses beneath his persona, his true soul was not lost, for he had written _the Doctor_ as well.

Folding the single sheet of journal paper into a tiny square, Rose placed it delicately into the front pocket of her black jeans and turned to face what John said to be the dimension cannon. A sigh gushed from her, it was shaky and unsteady.

Her legs wobbled, beginning to feel numb, and she lowered to sit down on the cold floor, now able to grieve and lament the loss of her family, of John.

Left with a question stuck in loop, she lowered her head and brought her eyelids to a close.

Why had she let his hand go?

Flushed with another wave of anger, Rose hurries to her feet but not without the burden of a dizzy spell transfixing her first. Muttering under her breath about a blood rush, she remembered why she stood and kicked what she thought would be hollow air. Instead, the fixture that was cleverly hidden started to ripple and came into view-no longer hiding.

Wincing, pulling her injured foot back, Rose limped toward it and saw how much bigger it was than she last remembered it. Instead of it being a device she could easily hold in her hands, it morphed in size-similar to an actual cannon. Stuck, Rose wondered how that would work.

Losing faith in John's words, Rose begins to feel hopeless again.

_Why had she let his hand go?_

* * *

"What are you saying, Rose? Why had you let whose hand go?" The Doctor inquires though he knew who she was talking about, the Meta-Doctor was all she brought up when explaining to him how she managed to jump through time and space just to be with him again.

"Saying what?" Rose used her damp hands to try and wipe tears but to no avail, it did nothing but spread the wetness around. She looked at the Doctor in the same way he stared at her.

"Well," he raises his eyebrows and tilts his head, "you've been asking why you let his hand go several times now. Didn't quite have the hearts to stop you..."

Rose mouths an '_oh_' and realizes she was was asking it aloud-the entire time-and a blush coloured her cheeks.

Then in bad taste, Rose states indifferently: "If he had come into that room with me, then I wouldn't be here. And I would be with him, happy. But he had to be difficult, which is _just_ like you, and pushed me on my way." The words keep coming and she can't stop but when her mind blanks, her hands clasped over her gaping mouth as she sees the Doctor's face reflect that of hurt and extreme sadness.

"You're just hurt, right now, Rose. You can't possibly mean-"

"Oh, yes I do!" Rose got to her feet and watched the Doctor come to a stand as well, his square shoulders relaxed at his side. This wasn't his first time being yelled at by a girl he cared so much about but in a way, it was his first time feeling crushed by a _human_ girl he loved so very much. "You left me there, twice, with some copy of you I didn't even want! I wanted to travel, I wanted to see the stars up close! I wanted to be with _you_ not him and then... then I fell in love..." Rose's voice dropped, lowering immensely as she covered her eyes with the palm of her hands.

"I don't even think he died knowing that. I think he thought I still loved you, and I do, but he... I called him Doctor, Doctor!" Rose declares, bellowing and for once, she didn't care if that redhead and the boy with glasses could hear her. She was heartbroken and alone, perhaps just as alone as he is. And she understood then, in that moment, as she confessed to him all of her darkest thoughts.

"I don't think he knew just how much..." Rose is cut off by the Doctor pulling her into a tight, forgiving hug; it was definitely the kind of contact, whether it be human or alien (she didn't care anymore), she craved and needed the most. She couldn't understand how the Doctor had coped through all of his different lives, losing people...that was a never ending cycle for him and he made no mention of it. And here she was, complaining like it was salt on a fresh wound.

Realizing her mistake, she apologizes and is told by the Doctor that there is no need.

His pink and yellow human had been put through so much, with no one there to comfort her or to understand her without thinking in some secret way that she was just another lunatic, and he couldn't be mad at her. If anything, he was mad at himself. Mad at the universes that made her feel this way.

No one deserved this kind of torment-she had taught him that and now, as he held onto her as if releasing her the tiniest bit would cause her to fade away, he appreciated that lesson.

"Oh, Rose...Rose...Rose..." the Doctor hums into her ear, managing to bring her blatant wailing into softer sobs as her hands balled into fists while taking hold of his tweed jacket again. He kissed the crown of her head, breathing in her lemony-smelling hair as his eyelids flutter closed.

Both very tired, exhausted from the emotional wreckage, the Doctor allows Rose to sleep on his bed as he pulled up the chair she had sat in before, and plopped down onto its plush cushion before dozing off as well.

In his dreams, Rose was bursting with joy as his past incarnation approached her from behind, greeting her with a lingering kiss on her cheek, as she stared the strange man surrounded by darkness and emptiness whereas she was illuminated by the distant, warm sunlight and bright green grass at her feet, the gentle breeze blowing her long blonde hair to one side. They were smiling at him, as if they saw him watching their festive moment, and he knew that dream wasn't his. He could never imagine the Meta-Doctor in his place.

Then he saw a door closing, and as it closed he kept leaning to the side to continue watching before he was so rudely interrupted. What he last saw before the door shut, the sound of a lock securing echoed in his ears, nearly broke his two hearts.

Eyelids snapping open, jolting forward, the Doctor saw Rose who was still asleep.

On her face is a smile, a pleasant smile.

A smile content and at peace with everything around her.

It's then that he realizes how miserable she'll be when she wakes despite being reunited with her Doctor, at long last.

* * *

"_Who's he?" John asks, raising an eyebrow at the awkward-looking fellow with no eyebrows and a bow tie._

"_Some bloke," Rose laughs and turns to face John after shutting the door, hands cupping the nape of his neck as they kiss, separating their world from whoever was standing on the other side of that doorway-reunited, at long last. In the most bittersweet way._


	3. Important

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Though the Doctor acknowledges all of his past companions as great, brilliant, people that ended up doing wonderful things during their life, there are some he holds to a...higher standard. Sarah Jane Smith was one of his companions that he could love with a passion of a thousand burning suns, and perhaps at one time he did. Marvelous human being, she is.

Then he met two women while on adventures, Reinette and Astrid, oh how they lit up his world and for the brief time he had known them, it was stretched into feeling like a lifetime. Yet it had been hard, to lose them. So very difficult.

Rose could go on that list, he thought-

"Oi! What do you think you're doing?" He interjects, coming up on Amy and Rory standing around a striped door, looking just as dumbfounded as they felt when they turned to see him, startled they were, as he hurried his pace toward them.

"What does it look like we're doing?" Amy sasses, giving him an expectant facial expression that warranted to him that Rory and she deserved answers.

Making sure he scowled at the TARDIS, the Doctor walked closer to Amy and Rory as he stared at them until it made them squirm in their own skin. He didn't want to, he didn't want to, he didn't want to...that's what his entire body was shouting at him, he didn't want to show them Rose's room. Why couldn't they bugger off and find another companion's room? Why did it have to be Rose?

"TARDIS, why don't you make this door disappear?" The Doctor states more than he asks, his back to the door as he watched Amy and Rory-wanting to make sure they wouldn't try anything.

After a moment, he turned around smoothly and the door was gone. As if it never had been there.

Amy and Rory exchanged glances, huffing in aggravation.

"Doc-" Amy started up again before being rudely cut off.

"Now then, off to kick back and relax! What do you say, eh? Sound like a good enough plan?" He grins widely though his eyes betray him; the TARDIS always took him wherever he needed to be and sometimes it worked out, sometimes he got to go where he promised to take his companions.

"Doctor!" Amy steps right in front of him just as he started taking his first steps back to the control room. "I think...I think we deserve answers."

"Right," the Doctor acknowledges Amy's valid point with a bow of his head as he pointed a finger up, as if an idea just came to him. Looking at Rory, finally pleased they were going to get results, Amy's serious glare diminished into a proud grin.

That wasn't so hard, she concluded. At least, not as hard as she thought it would be.

"But first, let's go relax, I've not been to this planet in three hundred years and I must say, I miss it." The Doctor continues and Amy feels her face fall back into the glare it was before.

Absolutely no progress was made! All right then, she would have a talk with River, maybe she'd knock some sense into the Doctor.

"Doctor, wait," Rory matches the Doctor's pace and adjusts his glasses. "Just tell us why you won't mention her. How hard can it be especially now that she's back?" This stopped the Doctor dead in his tracks, he deliberated and inhaled slowly.

Seeing this, Amy bickers at her husband. "How come you can get through to him and I can't?"

Rory shrugs in response.

The Doctor holds his breath for a long period of time, using that time to decide if he should provide them with _some_ details about Rose. When he gasped, panting slightly, the Doctor looks at them with a face so sad it was almost the equivalent to watching a puppy get kicked as it cried. Amy felt her stomach twist into knots, a pang of guilt swelling in her chest. She cornered him into confessing, didn't she? It would explain her sudden disappointment with herself.

"Just one reason," Amy hears herself say and for a while she thought it had been someone else.

"You owe us that..." Rory concurred, trying his best to muster a concerned, caring facial expression.

"One?" The Doctor looks at them both and sees them nod though he knew they wanted more information. Why did he tell them all about his past companions? Honestly, he forgets what even started the whole thing. It was a reasonably groggy memory, maybe he was rambling to himself while fixing something in one of the compartments or walking around the console, he didn't know. He could bet he was tired and they had overheard, he probably awoke them from sleep; sometimes when he got excited, his voice would raise.

It was jumpy at first, he told them the general information about his companions and then they'd come and ask to hear more of his adventures before they met him. They'd do this at night when something was itching their mind and wouldn't let them sleep, it was like a bedtime story as he told every adventure, with every companion, that he could remember.

He vaguely mentioned how he loved some of them more deeply than others but he kept all of them at arms length, too afraid to let any of them know how much he cared for them. Though he knew his companions knew, all of them did, he cared for them in ways others could care less about but it was the small things that he noticed and came to admire. He'd give his life to save any of them, _any of them_, and he wouldn't hesitate.

"Just one?" He repeats, startling them after the long pause of silence. He doesn't say it, but the loudness of his voice surrounded by the stillness took him by surprise as well. With that, he smiles a tiny smile.

"Oh, well, all right!" The Doctor caves.

"What's so special about this Rose?" Amy jumps in before he could say anything.

Mind blank, the Doctor takes a step back and shook his head; while he knew to expect that question, he didn't really want to believe either one of them would ask it. Obviously that was what bothered them the most, he supposed.

Thinking of Rose, the Doctor can't find it within himself to understand why he never mentioned her. Looking back on it, it was childish and stupid but then darker thoughts resurfaced and he's sullen, wilted with sadness.

For one, he wants to say, she was the first human he had truly fallen in love with him. Two, she offered him a new perspective. Three? Her compassion, it drove him mad. Fourth? He was sure there were plenty more reasons but right now he was being put on the spot, and his mind simply did not want to work.

"Well?" Amy asks, reminding him that Rory and her are waiting.

"Amy, please." Rory reckons, looking at her as if she might blow it.

"To be honest," he finally tells them, "she wasn't that important to mention."

Gasping, rather loudly, Amy is stunned. So is Rory but he didn't gasp, he was unable to but he was definitely amused by his wife's reaction.

"Now, are you ready for a vacation?" He changes the topic so naturally it was like plucking petals from their stem.


	4. Silence

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Taken aback, stuck in place as the Doctor was beginning to get away from the quizzical pair, Amy shakes her head and takes off towards him. "Doctor, come on, you can't keep avoiding the questions!" She calls out to him, astonished how quickly he could escape within a span of a few minor seconds.

"I could if you quit asking!" The Doctor retorts harshly, not stopping to face them as he opened the doors of the TARDIS and peered out. "Not exactly what I wanted," the Doctor turns and mumbles, heading for the console.

When he reaches to reset their intended the path, the TARDIS gives his hands (and even his boot-covered feet) a shock. Stepping back, he touches his hands tenderly and scrunches up his eyebrows.

"She shock you, eh?" Rory asks, gesturing toward the console with his eyes.

"Why? Did you try navigating her without my permission?" The Doctor asks with a hint of annoyance.

"What? No..." Rory is quick to respond, he even stammers, "We were just trying to, well, no easy way of saying it—"

"We were trying to enter Rose's room." Amy finishes for him, candid.

"You were...WHAT?" The Doctor looks at them, thunderstruck. "You didn't!"

"We did." They both say simultaneously.

"But she zapped me..." Rory adds defensively, as if that would make the Doctor give him any sympathy and understanding.

"What's all this about?" Comes a fourth voice, meek but orotund, and the quarreling trio all turn to the source of the verbalization.

"Ah, Rose!" The Doctor's exasperated expression transforms into something that was bright and blithe. Rose was standing at the top of the stairs, having just managed to find her way around the new interior of the TARDIS, and from where the Doctor stood he could tell the swollen redness around her eyes has gone down. Though as she sniffled, another thought came to him but he paid no mind to it because all that mattered then was that she was still here; she wasn't an illusion put in place by the Dream Lord.

Taking step after step down the metal stairs, stopping midway, Rose took her time and waited for a response from any of them as her eyes lingered on the redhead then the boy with glasses and then...then her Doctor, her changed, regenerated, Doctor. Lifting her eyes next, she observes the time rotor and the instruments on the hexagonal panel. _All of it changed_, Rose reflects and blinks so that she could take in the walls that look gold and bronze no doubt caused by the many lights. Avoiding the oppressing thoughts in her mind, she looks back down at the three and covers her disconcerted frown with one that was blank. Vacated of emotion, could they tell? Could they see just how badly she hurt on the inside? Missing her version of the Doctor so very much that it was edging on the verge of extreme distress.

Yearning for her family, Pete and Jackie and Tony, to be at her side no matter how much they argued with each other.

Forcing all of that to fester at the back of her mind, Rose gives them her attention—not aware she had decided to start listening in the middle of the Doctor's explanation.

"—They tried going into your room but the TARDIS, being the lovely ship that she is, made them suffer for even trying in the first place! Serves them right." The Doctor is beaming with glee, springing up the stairs just so he could be closer to Rose.

"Hey!" Rory and Amy call from below.

"Shut it!" The Doctor barks at them, not wanting to hear anymore of their excuses. Turning to face Rose, a mad grin present, he grabs hold of her by her elbows and says excitedly: "How would you like to go on an adventure?"

At the mention, Rose is delighted and just as she's about to say 'yeah' or nod, she is stumped; if it had been him, clad in leather or rectangular spectacles, she would sound so much more enthusiastic but he wasn't them. He changed, even the way he talked and moved around...he wasn't like before and before she can stop herself, tears are welling and start spilling over the brink of her eyelids. She's crying again.

How deranged would he be now? What would their adventures be like now? Were just as life-threatening and exciting as before? Surely they were, he's the Doctor after all. That part of him would never change.

"What's she doing now?" Amy voices her concern, albeit not without accidentally coming across as spiteful.

In the midst of Amy's question, the Doctor had wrapped his arms around Rose and ran his hand along her soft hair as she sobbed into his shoulder. He'd had to replace his jacket several times in the process of her emotional recovery.

When Amy got close enough, stopping as Rose pulled away from the Doctor and used several fingers to wipe away her tears, she felt sorry which was an emotion she hadn't felt for the blonde since she's been on the TARDIS. What had that poor woman gone through just to get here? She's agog and empathic to know but she doesn't reveal that.

"I'd like that..." Rose replied with a touch of soft sadness. Looking at the Doctor, watching him as he was preparing to ask if she was sure, Rose let out a snigger and grinned, answering his question before he even had a chance to say it. "Yeah, I'm sure."

Amy and Rory watched, observing them like they were foreign creatures they had never seen before but was just as curious to study their behavior. They communicated with each other as if they had known each other for years; Amy looks back at Rory and they think the same thing:

_What's in that room?_

They knew that the Doctor's favourite pastime is compulsive lying nevertheless they understood why. His tales were long and tiring to listen to but through that, they had learned so much about the Doctor; they were sure he told them more than he ever told Martha!

In no time at all, the Doctor turns around and jogs down the stairs, down another set and heads for the TARDIS doors, pushing one of the two open.

"Geronimo!" He announces, thrusting his arm into the air as Amy and Rory followed his same path and headed through the doors. Chancing a glance back, his busy eyes finally spot Rose amongst the clutter that is the console room.

"What happened to allons-y?" She asks weakly.

"Don't much like that word anymore." The Doctor is quick to dismiss her question but he sees her skepticism, her distrust to even go through those doors. _Had he changed that much?_ The sadness is hard to ignore however much he might want to, the Doctor says it. The one word she wanted to hear, the word she had grown fond of hearing even from John's mouth. From _her_ Doctor's mouth after they exchanged vows, when the pastor said he could kiss her, he had whispered it into her ear so quietly that not even the elder man dressed in clerical clothing could hear.

John had meant for that to be the '_let's go_' of their marriage, the start of another _adventure_. What a short adventure it had been having married too late into his human life.

"Allons-y..." the Doctor says, finally, with a heartbreaking smile as he tilts his head to one side and sees a single tear making its way down Rose's left cheek, her bottom lip quivering.

Outside of the TARDIS, Amy calls to the Doctor, hoping she could capture his attention. Stepping away from Rory and closer to the TARDIS doors, she watched Rose saunter closer.

"Where are we?" Amy asks, heedless of the Doctor interlocking his fingers with Rose's but Rory saw, how could he not? This mysterious Rose, stepping out before him, was the sole cause of his endeavors with Amy; she was the reason his hand got singed in an attempt to see what lay behind that door.

"Planet Movrore, dreamy little place dedicated to the most famous tales told by Disney!" The Doctor turns to face his three companions, more than elated to be travelling with his best friends. "Bit late for that, don't you think? The world of Disney has been distinct for millenias! Although...," the Doctor pauses for dramatic effect, "here it is...quite literally."

"Shouldn't it be named something related to Disney, then?" Solicits Amy, looking around and saw that from where they stood, it didn't look very Disney-esque at all.

"Ever so clever, Amelia Pond." The Doctor exclaims enthusiastically, placing his hand onto Amy's shoulder and leans closer to her ear. "Look, over there..." he points ahead, many conical towers pointing toward the brightly-coloured sky. "Shall we?" He turns his head and catches her looking at him before looking back at the towers in a doe-like manner.

* * *

"Why didn't they name it after Walt Disney?" Rory asks later as they get closer to approaching the towers which, as they trekked uphill, kept revealing itself to be an enormous castle. As white as the sky with the conical towers an enchanting blue and windows aligned in a zigzag pattern were too abundant for the eye to count. "Why _Movrore_? Not really a tribute if you ask me."

Rose looks at the boy with glasses that she now knows is called _Rory_, sometimes his name was tagged along with '_the Roman'_ and she wondered why. Had they gone back to a Roman era and he did something heroic during their visit?

Whatever the reason, Rose didn't ask and looked back at the Doctor, wanting an answer as well. The Doctor didn't respond, he only came to an abrupt stop. There was a single bridge that led to the only entrance way.

"How do you think they're dressed, Doctor?" Rose looked at the other two when they gave her weird looks.

"Planet dedicated to the most famous fairy tales in all Disney's history...most of them look like they're set in medieval times—which is absolute rubbish, honestly those writers don't know how to accurately plot time periods at all—"

"Yeah, get on with it!" Rose cut into whatever he was rambling on about now.

"—Middle ages." The Doctor looks as if Rose interrupting him didn't trouble him at all, soon his focused look transformed, he was grinning like mad which made Rose burst into a laugh. Amy and Rory were bemused, unable to forget how those two conversed as if time hadn't separated them, like they never had any hardships.

"It would be more proper if we dressed for the occasion, Doctor. How could you forget?" Rose teases, tongue poking out between her huge teeth.

"Dress up?" Amy and Rory yelp.

A huge question mark on her face, Rose looks at the pair like they were the crazy ones. "Don't you dress up?"

Shaking their heads, Rose directs her attention back at the Doctor who was intent on not looking at her; he even pulled out his sonic screwdriver and began moving around, avoiding her shocked stare.

"Oi, I thought you said that was dangerous?" Rose went up to him, taking his sonic screwdriver away.

"Hey!" He snaps, reaching for it but makes no movement to swipe it from her knowing he could just as easily take it back.

"Doctor." Rose quirks an eyebrow and he's reminded of their adventures, as his tenth incarnation, and his hearts stutter.

"Oh, well, you know me...always moving, never stopping..."

"_Doctor._" This time her tone is stern, the slightest falter undetectable.

"_All right_." The Doctor gives in, slumping his shoulders and yanks back his screwdriver the moment she handed it to him, stumbling back when he had overestimated the grip of her hand—it had been light which was unlike what he expected.

Satisfied, Rose took off toward the TARDIS leaving Rory and Amy behind as they questioned the Doctor further before they too went the same direction she had.

* * *

Stepping out from the wardrobe room, clad in proper attire, Amy turns around so that Rory could see all of what she was wearing.

"How could they breathe in this horrible thing?" Was the first thing Amy had said upon revealing herself to the three waiting, her hands fiddled with the corset tied around her waist that threatened to break her ribs. She eyed Rory and the Doctor enviously, jealous they could wear jackets and hose whereas Rose and she were stuck having to wear heat stroke-inducing dresses. Each of their outfits were different from each other though the same for the era they were in.

"I feel uncomfortable," was all that Rory could say and this caused Amy to burst out laughing, feeling better about herself. She looked at where he subtly gestured and couldn't keep from grinning at her quirky husband.

"Doctor, aren't you hot?" Rose looks at the Doctor while she fanned herself, pulling at what she could as if that would make things better. Feeling the heavy materials of the grown weigh her down, Rose lifted up the part of the kirtle that was visible and pushed up her narrow sleeves.

Amy soon did the same, sitting on the only other chair on the level where the console is stationed.

Purposely they stalled, staying in the cool TARDIS until night crept around. While waiting they talked about everything else except for the issue at hand: Rose; she was becoming the elephant in the room all the while, Rose talked to them all as if she wasn't.

* * *

Once they stopped at the peak of the hill, where they were before Rose confronted the Doctor about their outfits in question, Rose looked back at the Doctor with a teasing grin on her face as she continued downhill.

It was much cooler than before and that definitely made their lengthy travel that much more bearable.

"Are you afraid, Doctor?" Rose teases and if he focused hard enough, he could feel an elbow prod his side in a joking manner—as if she were still standing by his side.

"Me? Afraid? Never." The Doctor states confidently and accepts her challenge, rushing downhill past Rose in an effort to race with her; he doesn't mention his encounter with an unknown creature while taking (what he thought would be) a leisurely trip to Sapphire Waterfall. Catching on, Rose starts to hurry down the hill as well, laughing like she would have in the past.

Abandoned, again, Amy and Rory follow suit.

* * *

The entryway wasn't guarded which was peculiar to the Doctor but he doesn't point it out as they bravely entered the courtyard of the castle. Spinning around as he walked, looking at where the guard posts should be, there is no one shouting at them to '_halt_'. No one wandered around or approached them. It was as if the entire castle, itself, was desolated.

Continuing onward, the Doctor hastily heads for another set of tall doors, big enough to be fitted onto a house meant for a giant, and opens it. The door creaks open.

Poking his head around the ajar door, he sees no men clad in armor ready to spear him at a moments notice. Hmph-ing, the Doctor enters like some proud bumpkin.

"Hello?" The Doctor calls out, hearing the footsteps of Amy, Rory, and Rose coming to a stop behind him, and turns to them as his voice echoes about though the foyer was lavishly decorated with furniture. "Hear that?"

"Hear what?" Amy responds.

"Exactly, you hear nothing which is odd, if you think about it, because shouldn't there be _someone_ here? Protecting the premises from intruders. And we're intruders, are we not?"

"So what's your point?" Rory is next to answer the Doctor.

"My point is," the Doctor inhales as he looks around, "where is everyone?"

Rose thinks to say '_sleeping_' but finds it to be unwise so she remains quiet, watching her Doctor sonic everything in sight, venturing further into the castle. _He's still the same alien_, Rose resolves with herself and becomes more at ease.

_Just a lonely Time Lord taking company in those in need of an adventurous journey; a forever life-changing expedition._

* * *

As the Doctor leapt forward, proud that he found _someone_ within these stone walls, his three companions stood behind—just out of reach—as they watched him creep closer to the figure that was slumbering ever so peacefully it seemed.

"Is that...?" Amy is about to ask but Rose says it all for her. A quick glimpse at Rose and Amy felt floored, almost jealous, as she watched Rose walk up toward the sleeping body, peering at the humanoid just as the Doctor was doing except she wasn't using a sonic screwdriver to examine the body.

"Sleeping Beauty." Rose finishes for Amy, a teasing smile tickled her features as she inquisitively looked at the figure, following the movement of the screwdriver as the Doctor took grand sweeps to get a decent reading.

"Yep!" The Doctor confirms, popping the '_p_' as he turned toward the trio, looking at the screwdriver as he explains to them what the result is.

* * *

**A/N:** My apologies if the dialect, attitude, and how each character speaks is very OOC (out of character). I'm still adjusting but that's no excuse! Either way, I hope you enjoy what I've written and plan to write!


	5. Angels

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Turning around to get a sense of what the entire room looked like and where everything was, Amy slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from letting out a scream and jumped back, startled, at what stood behind her only seconds before.

While the others were examining the body, Amy decided to reject Rose's response and slowly let her hand fall back down to her side. "No," she breathes out in a way that sounded like someone delivered a blow to her stomach—compelling all of the air within her lungs to vacate.

As she spoke, she remembered that the Doctor had turned to face them...how had he not seen it? Did his eyes briefly skim their faces before he looked down at the screwdriver? Or did Rory and Amy cover up the Angel perfectly well? Whatever the reason, Amy figured piping up about it now would be best.

"Doctor, look," her voice was shaky as much as she tried to strong and unfazed by this stone-resembling figure with its hands placed over its bowed face. The Doctor was mid-sentence when he quit talking, the others turned as well to face whatever it was that Amy advised the Doctor to do.

Rose, having never seen a Weeping Angel, asked what was wrong with a statue; maybe it gave Amy a jump-scare, she didn't know the reason until the Doctor took hold of Rose's hand in that special way that sent chills along her spine. She knew something was wrong then. Rory looked at his panic-stricken wife as she blinked one eye at a time, at first he thought she was winking at the statue but eventually realized she was, indeed, not flirting with the petrified angel.

"Rose, Rory," the Doctor gets their attention. "Don't blink, don't turn your back, and don't look away but most importantly, _don't blink_." He stresses the last two words, as if that alone would keep them from harms way.

"Why?" Rose asks, confused as to why but knew to trust the Doctor and did what he said.

"Because the _second_ you look away, they move and you see, Rose, that's not good. Not good at all."

"Well is there a way to escape it?"

"Not '_it_', Rose, _them_." He corrects, giving her hand a squeeze as his mind thinks up a way.

"Alright, _them_, how do we escape _them_? There must be a way, yeah? Always is one with you around, Doctor." Rose releases the Doctor's hand and steps around Amy and Rory who remained still in their spot, Rory doing as Amy now that he knew why...somewhat.

"Can't you get the TARDIS to come in here?" Rory suggests, thinking that could work...it was a reasonable thought.

"Nah, shocked me whenever I tried to reset the coordinates but you already knew that, you saw me try." The Doctor reminds Rory.

Meanwhile, Rose walks around the Angel with its hands over its face.

"What's so dangerous about a bloody statue?" Rose blurts out randomly, interrupting the silence that fell.

"That wasn't here before..." Amy jumps in, motioning toward the Angel. "Shadows, must've been in the shadows. What do you think, Doctor? Am I right? It's so dark in this putrid place! Oh, I just realized something...Doctor, what if there were more that we passed?" Worry and desperation began speaking for her as her thoughts spun around in her mind. This angel was too close for her liking, she was starting to feel like she couldn't breathe. Maybe she would go into shock? It felt like it.

"I can't see..." Amy whines, on the verge of tears.

"Whatever you do, don't look into its eyes..." the Doctor says in the midst of angst and hysteria.

"We can't _see_ its eyes!" Rory nearly yells, no doubt his anxiety influenced by Amy's.

"Right...right..." the Doctor turns to look at the sleeping woman, hands folded and placed on her stomach, and feels awful for even considering the option.

After a moment of pacing around in circles behind Amy and Rory, possibly even Rose, the Doctor tenderly touches the woman's neck and quirks up an eyebrow. Broken.

_So...it would be okay to..._

"Doctor? What are you doing?" Rose rushes toward him, voice low so as not to distract Rory and Amy.

"Help me, dead weight is surprisingly heavy..." the Doctor lets out a grunt as he wills the limp body into an upright position. _Right, she hadn't been dead for long..._, he realizes as he remembered how stiff bodies could be after being dead for twelve hours.

"_Deadweight?_" Amy's voice goes up an octave, shrill with increasing alarm. Sensing Rory wanting to turn around and look, Amy slapped his arm to keep him from doing so and bites out a deadly warning: "_Don't._"

Feeling Rory become rigid at her side, Amy relaxed...well, relaxed as much as she could with an Angel posed centimeters away from her.

As Rose helped the Doctor situate the body, the Doctor stood up and stared at Rose—the way her hands tucked in the sheets and placed the pillow around the body to keep it from falling whichever way. Ever so helpful.

_Oh, Rose..._, he whispers in his mind and almost says it but remembers where they are and who they're trying to escape from.

"What now?" Rose stands, hands on her hips, as she searched his blank face for answers. "Well?" She repeats when he's silent, she didn't exactly have much patience on her side at this moment.

"Well we've got to find a way to keep her eyes open... Rory, would you know?"

"Sorry?" Rose sasses, jutting her head forward at the Doctor's inquiry.

"So we can leave, Rose!"

"Ah," Rory was hesitant and desperate to know why the Doctor needed to keep Sleeping Beauty's eyes open. "Not at that moment, kind of busy at the moment. Come back to me on that later...sorry..."

Letting out a huff of frustration, the Doctor throws his arms into the air and steps toward the Angel.

"Wait, you said she was deadweight meaning she's dead, right?" Rory twitches, wanting to see for himself but doesn't move, and waits for the Doctor to reply and instead hears Rose confirm his question.

"Yeah..."

"Well...if I'm thinking what you were thinking about doing, then it's no use trying, Doctor. Her eyes will have rolled back."

"Rassilon!" The Doctor curses, slapping himself for not having remembered that. He could remember how many hours it takes for a body to become as solid as an unbending board but he couldn't remember that simple thing! How bloody foolish! He's just wasted his time. Even Time Lords can forget such simple things! That would have been too easy anyway, he realizes.

"Angel must've snapped her neck while she was, well, as you could see, sleeping. Would've been a quick and painless death." The Doctor adds after composing himself, as if his statement would make any of them feel any better about the current situation they were in. Turning to Rose, he takes hold of both of her hands and looks deeply into her eyes.

"What?" She looks confused, probably just as focused as him though with little understanding of the creature.

"I want you to run for the TARDIS, I've set up another emergency protocol in case this were to happen—"

"Like hell I am not!" Rose pushes his hands down and away from her. "I'm not losing you too."

Storming out of the room, the Doctor rushes after her and gives no warning to the others that kept blinking one eye at a time. "Rose, where are you headed?"

"Gonna find a mirror!" She replies, going in and out of rooms in pursuit of a full length mirror.

"Rose, that won't work!"

"Well you haven't given me much to go off on!" Rose yells back, returning with a mirror and almost bumps into the Doctor who had followed her so as to make sure there weren't anymore Angels they had missed. "Why won't that work? I can't pilot the TARDIS and the bloody thing—ship—won't let you touch its console, and I'm not going to watch as you get yourself killed in an attempt to save us!"

"Rose, my sweet, caring Rose..." the Doctor places both of his hands on either side of her face, her mouth slack paired with eyes that portrayed a mixture of helplessness and tenacity.

"There must be a way..." Rose nearly breaks down into a sob, a short cry due to desperation and a fear of the unknown. She slumps against him, shutting her eyelids tightly. Rose gathers herself, putting fragments of herself back together as she tries to remain strong around him. During this, the Doctor retrieves the mirror from her hand and slips it into the pocket of his trousers; it was a handheld looking glass but it would work nonetheless.

"There is a way, there's always a way with me around, you said so yourself. Remember?"

"Yeah," Rose smiles, still feeling helpless, and lifts her head to look up at him again but makes no mention of his eyes, both suddenly cockeyed. "Said it not too long ago."

In truth, it felt like she had said it hours before.

"Can we outrun it?" Rose says when silence comes between them again.

There's been a lot of quiet between words, she realizes. A lot being unsaid.

During the stillness, the Doctor keeps his off-center gaze at the Angel behind Rose despite it being a great distance away, it was still there...intending to have her, send her back; take her away, _again_, without his go ahead. It must have come from the room she found the mirror in, that would explain its faraway distance. Within the span of a few seconds of him not looking back, the stone-imposing creature moved from the room.

It must have been reaching the end of its life, its ability much slower compared to what the Doctor has seen of the Weeping Angels in the past.

"No," the Doctor says bluntly. "They're much too fast. We'd never make it to the TARDIS."

"Then what do we do?"

Taking hold of her hand, the Doctor walks back to the room with her following along, and holds up the mirror in a way that showed some of his face and the Angel now at their backs as if it, too, knew what he was doing.

"Go to the TARDIS you two," the Doctor motions for them to leave as he keeps his eyes on the Angel, Rose coming to stand beside him.

Realizing what he was going to do, Rose begins shaking her head (eyes still on the Angel in front of them) while protesting as Amy and Rory took off, running, bumping into her shoulder as they went. "No Doctor. No, no, no, no, I won't let you do this! I'm not going to let you kill yourself!"

"Just shut up and turn around, Rose!" The Doctor demands to Rose.

Upon doing so, Rose gasps, quickly averting her stare at the chest of the Angel—its hands held up, fingers bent as if ready to claw her apart, with its mouth wide open, teeth sharp as fangs.

Beyond confused, Rose asks the first question that came to mind: "How...how...how did they get away? Why didn't it go after them?"

Letting out a sigh, the Doctor explains to her in a monotonous manner, as if the mere discussion of it bored him out of his mind. "They kept watching it until they couldn't see it anymore. Have you tried running backwards? I'll have you know that the act is difficult to master. You caught it just as they couldn't see the Angel anymore. It's a great thing that you turned around when you did, Rose..."

"Was that why your eyes went all funny?" Rose's mind flashes back to them, talking in a poorly lit corridor (oil lamps starting to burn out), no longer listening for his reply. Thinking further back, she remembered seeing an outlined figure amidst the moonlight breaking through the thick curtains drawn closed. She only stared at it while in the room, exercising the Doctor's wisdom, until her hands finally came in contact with the reflective object she knew to be a mirror. It was smaller than what she had anticipated but it would work (or at least, she thought it would have) until the Doctor told her otherwise. She had flicked her gaze back toward the figure until she was out of the room and back in the hallway where the Doctor could see her; Rose was unaware of how close the figure came to zapping her backwards into another time period, unaware of how close it had gotten to re-energising itself to stay young.

"Saved your life, didn't I?" The Doctor feels his lips twitch into a smile.

"Well, yeah."

Just as Rose blinks (unaccustomed to the laws of how to act when confronted by an Angel), the Doctor shouts: _RUN!_

The Doctor and Rose, hand-in-hand, barely miss the door on their way out as they run, hearts beating against their chests and legs moving so fast they practically felt nonexistent! Rose was baffled, amazed that she had not fallen at the speed she was going.

* * *

Back inside the TARDIS, laughing their arses off, the Doctor sets the coordinates for another location and grips onto the square railing as the TARDIS travelled through the time vortex.

"How?" Come three different voices, within seconds of each other.

"Just an old trick..." the Doctor waves a hand at them, leaving their interpretation up to their imaginations.

A little later on, when Amy and Rory announce their sendoffs and head for their room, Rose comes to stand beside the Doctor.

"How _did_ you do it, Doctor?"

Her voice is soft and innocent, as if she had never been exposed to such an extreme range of cruelty, and its the kindness and sincerity within her question that cause him to look up from what he was doing and look at her. Into her brown, beautiful brown, eyes.

He was glad that the Angel hadn't gotten to her, so tremendously glad she wasn't taken from him for the third time.

"Permanently locked in place, forever staring at each other." The Doctor shrugs, as if it were no big deal because it wasn't, not as long as he had his Rose. Seeing the wonder still visible on her face, he explains a bit further: "When we left, the first Angel—the one I was looking at—would have moved to capture us but was stopped, by the Angel you were facing."

Nodding, Rose grabs onto his hand and squeezes it with all the strength she could manage.

"I'll never stop owing you, will I?"

"Afraid so." The Doctor brings her hand up to his mouth, kissing her supple skin and leaves her hand there beneath his puckered lips. "But where's the fun in that?" He murmurs, lips tickling her skin.

Lowering her hand, the Doctor returns to looking at her—enjoying the blonde hair, golden skin that flushed crimson, full lips, round hips...

"No fun in being lonely."

"Nah," Rose agrees. "Better with two."

* * *

**A/N:** If you want to know, I was listening to a piano version of Kingdom Heart's _"Dearly Beloved"_ covered by Verdegrand on YouTube.


	6. Room

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Waking with a surge of energy, a layer of skin coaxing his body as his chest rose then fell caused him to wheeze, the Doctor was convinced—thoroughly convinced—that it had been a dream. How could he ever get back what he wished to be returned? Life was endlessly bitter and it showed him no remorse, and in a way it had...it allowed him to see Rose, one more time, when Donna had been his companion before she very nearly sacrificed herself. Donna Noble, a woman he hadn't recognized to be important turned out to be in more ways than he could ever understand!

Running a hand through his fringe, the Doctor scrambled out of bed and wandered through the TARDIS, the very ship that made her room reappear, in a different location, but still there. When he reached the door, stopping as his body continued to face the long, winding corridor ahead of him, the Doctor risks a stuttering glance at Rose's door.

There was a large part of him that was afraid of opening that door, afraid of corroborating any suspicion he had when he awoke; it wasn't a pleasant thought and he didn't enjoy it but still, he kept revolving around it. Now he felt he must know. As his hand, absently, reached out to the reversed diamond-shaped doorknob and gives it a kind twist so as not to disturb anyone lurking nearby, the Doctor squints his eyes closed and peaks like a child told to look away. He even goes so far as to cover his eyes with his other hand, separating his index and middle finger to steal quick glimpses into the dark room.

The room is adorn with stars of all sizes, plastered to the wall, that glow only when there was darkness in the room. He remembered how she persisted, pleading to him to allow her to stick things on the inside of the TARDIS walls; he had been unwilling at first, he didn't want to vandalize his precious, _Sexy_, ship with such childish decorations but eventually he gave in. If he hadn't allowed it, the TARDIS would have worked her magic to give Rose what she wanted. Now that he had taken her up close to see the stars, she never wanted to relent and let that all pass by. Awfully consistent that human.

Similar to a criminal knowing they were stepping into a trap but still did so anyway, the Doctor alternates which foot officially stepped into the room first until he thought: _just get on with it already!_

In the full-size bed, the Doctor looks at the duvet outlining the shape of a sleeping Rose as she lay on her side, her back to him, with her blonde hair all around and hand curled beneath her pillow. She looks just as peaceful and content as she did the night before when she had returned to him only there isn't a smile stretched on her face and his dream wasn't about the tenth incarnation of himself and her.

After a while of standing, awkwardly, in the middle of her room the Doctor is careful to step around articles of clothing and rubbish materials abandoned on the floor while he sits on the edge of her bed. He was so sure this couldn't be it, it was too good to be true. Something was bound to happen, it was destined to knowing his cursed luck...

There had to be more than this...

Regardless, he sits and admires the way she looks. When he looks away to try and find anything that may have been placed differently or added since her return, the Doctor having paid no mind to her shifting in bed, he is startled out of a haze when he hears his name being said repeatedly. First checking the door as it was still propped open wide enough for him to slip in then swiveling his head around to see Rose, now stirring awake, he gives a slight jump.

"Rose, what are you doing up?" The Doctor asks, liking how hoarse her voice sounded as she woke to gather her bearings.

"...What are you doing in my room?" Rose's eyebrows furrow down in confusion, obviously still not completely awake as she uses one hand to rub her eyes and to stifle a yawn.

"I...I thought I heard you scream..." the Doctor thinks this is better to say instead of '_I wanted to make sure you were still here_' for reasons he has yet to fully understand himself. Plus, it was easier for her to comprehend as he soon became aware of when she whispered what sounded like '_oh_' and started propping herself up on her elbows.

"You didn't have a nightmare, did you?" Rose's mouth slips up at one corner, smiling slyly.

"No, of course not." The Doctor chuckles and quick flashes of his realistic dream zoom through his mind like a freight train going at maximum speed, maybe faster. To make certain of the situation, the Doctor was quiet as he listened for chirping that sounded much too happy for his liking and immediately became resolute when he heard nothing but her slow, neutralized, breathing.

"I'll be on my way now..." the Doctor slaps his knee as if he has heard the funniest joke in all of time and space, and gets up but is paused when Rose reaches, actually stretches from her current position, and grasps onto his hand. Her grip was astonishingly gentle that for a while, he was sure he was only holding onto air. Yet when he cast a gander down at his left hand, very much so her fingers were curled around his palm. If he weren't already mad, she'd probably be the reason for it.

"Could you...stay?" Rose spoke delicately, afraid of rejection, and the wait is agonizingly painful. It, in some disturbing way, almost compared to the sorrow she was still grieving over when she lost John to those bloody things. The second those words came from her mouth, she regretted them as they lingered in the air...waiting to be accepted or neglected; she wasn't sure what response she preferred, at this point...she favored the unknowing grey area between them. It allowed her space to think and to enact many scenes depending on his response.

Easing back down onto the bed, still sitting, the Doctor eased Rose's hand onto his lap as he covered the top of her palm with his other hand. He gazed at the excessive group of stars that were in clusters at first before spreading out the further out the wall went, the distance between them growing in size. Looking at Rose, who was also looking at the stars that glow a soft diluted-pistachio colour, he could feel that distance. It was an ebb that pushed and pulled against him, like being stranded at sea as the waves counteracted against his attempts to swim toward an unlocated shore.

"Are you sure?" The Doctor doesn't like the loudness of his voice even though it's just above a whisper, it still disturbed the peaceful silence that cradled them both.

"Yeah."

Rassilon, how he loved hearing her say that word. It was his second favourite word said by her.

Hesitant, the Doctor eases beneath the sheets and as soon as he's comfortable, takes hold of her hand again.

"I like holding your hand." Rose states at random, lying on her back beside him as she stares at the ceiling that is also decorated with stars. Neither of them attempted snuggling or cuddling, especially not Rose since she thought it would be dishonoring to John, _her_ Doctor.

"Quite right, too." The Doctor agrees, a curt nod coming from him and not once looks at Rose, he's captivated by the stars—how their shape is perceived to be by those pathetic apes back on planet Earth and their colour, a typical yellow—all the while, Rose looks at him from the corner of her eyes. He wasn't her version of, well, him but that was okay, she supposed because somewhere within him is her Doctor, her John, the alien she fell in love with all those years ago and learned to re-love after being left behind for the second time.

Maybe she could learn to love him again? Maybe that would go right and neither of them would die. She liked that idea, it was comforting and it kept the welling tears from falling.

"Thanks." She smiled though she is sure he couldn't see that but she didn't care.

"For what?" Turning so that the side of his right face touched the pillow, he looked at her in the most endearing and unexpectant way.

"Just...for everything, you know." Rose shrugs, not exactly sure what to say though the thoughts behind it all were plenty and well-intentioned.

"Oh, I didn't do anything."

"How wrong you are," Rose nearly bursts into a laugh only to suppress it by slapping both hands over her mouth leaving the Doctor with a feeling of emptiness and warmth at his now free hand. It was impressive, and not in a good way, how easily he forgets how her hand feels against his; the simple gesture that meant so much told him everything. He could feel it, the life and energy coursing through her veins along with each strong emotion that made her the compassionate pink and yellow human he came to adore in the first place.

_His_ precious Rose.

He could never understand why anyone would want to hurt her, she was like a lost kitten searching everywhere just to find a purpose to serve in life and when she found one, it was all swiped from beneath her. Every attempt she tried to pursue only failed.

Saving her father, which she refused to believe was a fixed point in time.

Trying to make her romantic relationship work with Mickey though they both knew she was very clearly in love with the Doctor.

Nearly slipping into the Void in an effort to keep it online because she had been eager to stay with the Doctor and help him send the Daleks and Cybermen on their way to damnation.

Then in the parallel universe where Pete and Jackie could be together at long last, and then John, and her only brother, Tony, were taken from her without any regards to how she felt.

All she did was try and try but never quite prevailed except in few circumstances such as when she became the Bad Wolf, resurrecting Captain Jack and saving the Doctor. And Donna, making sure they fixed what was not meant to be changed in the first place, before sending the sassy and very feisty redhead on her way.

Why did the world refuse to give her a chance?

Why was he the only one who could see all of her brilliant potential?

_Why_ is the world so blind to her?

Was it because some people didn't deserve all of that acknowledgement? Because if that was the reason, the Doctor strongly opposed that as any reliable excuse to continuously deny at least one fantastically spectacular human being the right to pure happiness without tainting it in wretched pain.

"No, Rose..." the Doctor props up on his elbows to get a better look at her as she studied the stars. "Thank you." _For making me see..._

From what he could, he saw a grin light up her face before she rolled over onto her side.

"Goodnight, Doctor." She tells him, amusement laced in her voice.

Denying his urge to kiss her and wrap his arms securely around her, to let her know that she wasn't alone in whatever it was she was truly feeling—despair, hopelessness, rage, fear, sadness—he folds his hands and eases them to rest beneath his head as he continued to look at the stars.

* * *

"Was he in the library?"

"No."

"The kitchen?"

"No."

"The pool?"

"No."

"What about his study?"

"No."

"...His...room?"

"Nope."

"Well, he isn't here, so where is he?" Amy faces her husband as they stand beneath the console, near the hammock, as they go through their improvised checklist of all the possible places the Doctor would visit. Or the places they knew he liked to visit as they had often caught him in any of those places more than once.

"If it makes you feel better, he wasn't in our room inspecting our bunk beds." Rory adds, pursing his lips tautly into a straight line.

"Thanks Rory, that helped heaps!" Amy gives him a dry look, sarcasm evident in her posture, tone, and what was now her more-serious facial expression. "Because we've caught him in there more than we could possibly count!" Saying this, she crosses her arms over her chest and stomped upstairs moodily while giving her head a shake, ginger ringlets bouncing in motion.

Suddenly, at the commotion of obnoxious talking and laughter, Amy and Rory go on full alert—glad, when they recognize his voice, that he is still alive and well. The man of the hour and—his eye candy—Rose leap down the stairs frivolously.

"Have a good time, you lot?" Amy greets them with a stern attitude, one that the Doctor can guess will be her lecturing tone when she has children of her own.

"Yeah, lovely time." Rose is grinning, looking just as mad the Doctor, as she tucks a lock of stray hair behind her hair which failed horribly at staying tucked into an updo.

"Where were you, Doctor? We couldn't find you anywhere." Rory follows the Doctor around the console as he checked to make sure everything is in working order, as it should be.

"Did it ever occur to you to come a-knockin' at Rose's door?" The Doctor stops to give Rory a questionable, expectant, stare before proceeding on with what he was doing earlier.

"Ah..." Rory looks back at Amy who had taken to following the Doctor too. "No?"

"Well that's where I was. With Rose. In her room." The Doctor mentions under his breath, not really talking to them anymore. Rory and Amy stop to look at each other.

_Oh God, were they..._

"Relax..." Rose spots the expressions on their horrified faces which nearly cause her to erupt into tears of laughter. "We just talked is all."

Feeling better about that, Amy and Rory take a step back from the console and before Rose and the Doctor could process the intentions of the rebellious pair, they dart off up the stairs and down the corridor that Rose and the Doctor had just come from.

"Where do you think they're headed?" Rose looks at the Doctor, helping him pilot the ship in whatever way she could if she remembered it correctly, not sure if some mechanisms were placed as they always were when she knew the TARDIS to have coral pillars and rounder walls.

"Your room." The Doctor responds plainly, neither in distaste or favor of their curiosity, as he brushes past Rose, her bum barely grazing his leg in the process of him stepping around her to finish off the last panel.

"Why?"

"They want to know who you are and why I've never talked about you."

"Well, why haven't you? What's wrong about discussing me?"

When he finished the last of toying with the instruments, he steps up close to Rose, as if he could intimidate her with his height even if there is only a few centimeters difference.

"It was...too personal to mention us."

Rose was stuck on the word '_us_' as if they had been an item because they both knew, and know, the potential is there, it just waits like an inactive volcano—the activity was there, broiling beneath the surface, waiting to erupt but how long could they wait? How long? Because Rose was tired of being kept at arm's length, she was tired of him dismissing his fondness for her because she knew that he knew that she knew it was there, within him.

How could she ignore all of that waiting potential? From the moment he grabbed her hand and told her to run, when he let her feel what he felt—the world spinning at 67,000 thousands miles per hour—before telling her to forget him as if _that_, as if _all of that_, could be forgotten. How could it? She knew it was hard watching those she loved and cared about die, not even getting the chance to grow old; she knew what it felt like to be alone and how everyday she wished it had been her instead of all of them. She could understand all of that now though it was on a less extreme scale but still, the point was and continues to remain, how could she ignore it?

Thinking about all of that, she couldn't blame him but then...aren't all of his memories with his past companions personal? Didn't he love them in the way he loves her? Or was her memory held to a whole new level of _personal_? Whatever, she didn't ask, didn't _think_ to ask.

"Aren't you going to stop them?"

"No. Are you?"

"No." Rose shakes her head, and flashes her eyes up to the ceiling briefly—she didn't own anything she thought would be invasive or intrusive of them to find.

Unflinching, Rose smiles a tiny smile—feeling small under his scrutinizing stare. What was he thinking anyway? Was he thinking of their next adventure? Or was he thinking of how such small, stupid human beings like herself were still babies in his eyes?

"Rose..." He brings a hand up to her face, caressing her cheek with the back of his hand as he searched her eyes—wanting to find a flint of fear or uncertainty in them but couldn't.

As if he were testing the temperature of the ocean, he dips down slightly and delivers a soft kiss to her parted lips before pulling away. When he watched her, he was amused at her facial expression which was that of someone who had been caught off-guard! He smiles, dropping his hand from cupping her cheek, and turns to face the console, eyes looking at the view-screen to make sure he had the coordinates set right.

Silence falls, it screaming words they would never think to speak, as Rose walked toward the captain's chair and sat down, watching the alien that had just pecked her on her lips!

The silence is louder than both of them combined, it gnaws at their nerves and is enough to make them grow apart but they don't utter cheap excuses and journey elsewhere in the TARDIS. Instead they loiter in the control room, occasionally looking at each other when the other wasn't looking, and think private thoughts about whatever comes to mind.

Neither had a preference of what to think just as long as it wasn't anything to start a conversation and yet, nearly all of their thoughts were worthy of being shared; worthy enough to be discussed and listened to. Everything they thought was exactly the opposite of what they wanted to think.

* * *

"What do you thinks in her room?" Amy asks Rory, punching his arm playfully as they walk through the corridors in search of Rose's bedroom, in a different location than where it was before the Doctor instructed it be displaced.

"She looks like the type that would keep a lot of pictures." Rory suggests with a shrug, no doubt adding to the imagination of Amelia Pond. "What about you?"

"I was thinking something along those lines..."

Looking at her once then again, Rory gives her a slight shove. "No you weren't."

"Okay, _no_ I wasn't. I wasn't thinking anything really."

Giving her a knowing glare, Amy looks back with a straight face and when they looked ahead again, a smile came onto her face. She didn't know what to think, really, so many ideas of what was beyond that door excited her! They would finally find out who that Rose is and it was incomparable to anything Amy has thought to be nerve-bending.

Except for her wedding.

And Raggedy Man, showing up twelve years after he promised _five minutes_.

Possibly even finding out that River Song is Rory and hers _daughter_ for godsake!

But this Rose, boy did she belong on that list! Even if the Doctor hadn't meant for Rose to seem like a mysterious, dangerous, unyielding woman, he let their minds wander and Amy let her mind travel far...

"Oi, up ahead!" Rory started jogging toward the pink and lavender striped door. As he listened, even placing his hand out as a way of telling Amy to stand still, for any surging electric current and beamed up at his wife in silent exclaim, he nudged open the door as soon as he tested out the door knob. The TARDIS didn't deliver a zap toward his hand, which made him proud as his palm and parts of his fingers still held a red hue.

Upon entering the room, it wasn't at all what they expected.

Pale stars were glued to just about every spot available to the walls—that's what they noticed first—and then they noticed the bed, the headboard of it pushed up against one of the longer walls to their right, with a duvet that was crumpled and gathered in a bundled up heap in the middle of her bed.

As Amy and Rory parted, exploring different parts of the room, sometimes stopping to show each other different possessions, they were awestruck by this Rose. Just from standing in one place for too long they felt like intruders, stealing away glimpses into an insight of sentimental memories.

Beneath one of the two end tables by Rose's bed is a slot that was occupied by photo albums binded together with leather. There were two, one made of black leather and the next stained brown. Both were covered with a thick amount of dust that was hard to rub away, moving past that complication (Amy and Rory agreeing that it was a trifling task anyway) and pulled the black photo album from its place first.

Lifting the cover open with great care, Amy and Rory situated themselves comfortably on the floor and looked at the photos that were neatly slid into protective sleeves. Three photos per page, nine in total before they thumbed over to see more.

Perplexed by the almost-bald looking man, clad in black and leather, the eloped couple soon realized it was an earlier incarnation of the Doctor. He was handsome especially with his darling deep blue eyes that could ward off any oncoming threat with the cold look they cast. But...when those eyes looked down at the blonde woman, Rose much younger than she is now with longer hair, they softened. As if his hardened persona was putty in her hands and it was, Amy and Rory saw, from several of the photographs.

Too many times had the camera snapped when they weren't looking—busy fussing or excitedly discussing a past adventure—and the grins, they were honest and pure. Untouched by the bitterness. It was as if they forgot their worries and troubles as soon as they looked at each other; nothing else mattered.

"Look at that one!" Amy points to a photo placed near the end of the album. "Look at how he looks at her! It's like..."

"Like he loves her." Rory finishes for her, both too stunned for words and yet they were able to exclaim uncontainable reactions.

The photo was taken at some cramped place, near winter, and they were sat next to each other. Rose had been looking at the camera, her face serious and blank while the Doctor had his arms propped up against the back of the couch as he looked at her in the most affectionate way. A grand grin forever frozen on his face which caused the skin around his eyes to crinkle. Pure elation.

Looking through the last of the photos in the first album, they set it back in its place before pulling out the only other one. In this one, the Doctor looked different and so did Rose. The Doctor's hair was full of tousles and stood up at ends but not without a fringe! His eyes looked just as old as they do now, but the madness was more visible in this face compared to the brooding darkness of the last and of the current one now. Rose's hair was cut short, just above her shoulders, as it is now, and she was starting to look just as mad as the Doctor.

It was as if the Doctor had regenerated with the purpose of portraying his love to her, becoming younger and wilder, with a personality that wasn't so foreboding and morbid. Like he had an intent to keep her around, forever.

Turning the pages after one another felt like there was twenty-minutes set in between as they stared at each photo, taking their time. He looked at her the same way as he had in the past photo album except it was a different kind of look. One that grew in love for such an average girl but also held great pain because he knew, sooner or later he would have to abandon her in some way.

Close to tears, Amy fights the strong tug of sadness, and turns the page. It was the last occupied page except it was left with more slots. Many more pages left blank. Only one photo resides on that page, and in this one they're both looking at each other. Holding hands, they aren't smiling or grinning but somehow through that photo it was obvious, it didn't take lovestruck stares and sincere grins for that to be noticed.

It may have just been because of the simple act of holding hands but whatever the reason, Amy and Rory could tell. Oh, it was screaming to them—the rest of those blank pages, they weren't left empty on purpose, they were meant to be filled with photos to the final, official, last page of the album just like the other leather-bound photo journal had been.

It was left, abandoned on accident, waiting to be completed by its owner, Rose Tyler who had inscribed her name on the top left-hand corner of the albums.

Only she never got the chance to finish it, it didn't have stray photos falling out from random pages of its inner-workings like the other one had. It wasn't full to the brink but it was meant to be, that much Amy and Rory knew. How could Rose just up and leave all of this happiness and love without taking her belongings at first? It was because she hadn't just up and left, she was taken without warning because she never had any intention on leaving. She had planned on staying for as long as she could.

That's why, when they entered her room, they felt like strangers walking in on the personal life of someone very close and dear to the Doctor's two hearts.

Putting the album back, Amy gets to her feet and turns from Rory so she could wipe away any tears that had fallen stray from her tear ducts.

Looking around now with refreshed eyes and a more in-depth understanding of Rose, they saw everything as it was and as it should be. Placed and positioned, by her, so many years ago with the intention of forever belonging. Everything had collected dust, never having been touched by the Doctor himself. She never came back to gather her souvenirs, her personal belongings, and anything else that was in the room.

She intended to come back, so where was she taken away to?

Exiting the room, a cloud of intense and overwhelming melancholy, and closing the door on their way out, Amy and Rory head to where they assumed the Doctor and Rose to be.

That's why he never mentioned her, there was too much pain associated with her memory; if there wasn't pain, there was grief and remorse, and all of that could be expressed just by stating her name.

Approaching the stairs that led down onto the hexagonal-shaped platform, the couple look at Rose longer than they needed. She only looked their direction when she felt uncomfortable.

Stepping down until they were close enough to her so there wouldn't be a shout fest, Amy and Rory surround the Doctor and Rose.

"You never wanted to leave..." It was a statement rather than a question but Amy had meant it to be a question, she was hoping Rose would tell them everything.

"So why did you?" Rory asks.

"I never meant to." Rose defends, not at all offended by their tones that sounded as if they had been drained of any energy and emotion. What had they found to be so painfully jeopardizing?

"Then where did you go?"

"To an alternate universe." Rose replied, feeling the Doctor's hand rest on her shoulder.

"Did you want to?"

"No."

"So?"

Sensing they wouldn't quit asking questions until they were satisfied with the answers, Rose gushed out a shaky sigh and narrowed her eyes to look at her thumbs as she twiddled them.

Rubbing her lips together, trying to figure out where she should start, Rose started to speak—it was incoherent at first, words jumped together as she tried to find her natural telling but eventually she got around to making sense. She explained how the Cult of Skaro brought a device, Genesis Ark, through the breach and had declared war on the Cybermen that also managed to slip through the breach.

The war was catastrophic and threatened to bring an end to humanity, so the Doctor did his famous meddling about and brought two clamps to hold Rose and him in place as soon as they opened up the Void that would ultimately suck in the mass of Daleks and Cybermen.

At the mention of her nearly being sucked into the Void in an attempt to keep it from going offline, Pete—her father—had used an earlier version of the dimension cannon to pop back and forth between Rose's world and his to save her just before being sucked in.

Then she talked about the next war and how Donna, who Rose presumed the Doctor already told the gasping pair about, managed to create a Meta-Crisis version of the Doctor and returned her to Pete's world because having the Meta-Doctor in the other world would cause another paradox. Couldn't have that. Within that, she mentioned how she jumped into different worlds in an effort to find the Doctor and when she found him...

That's when she stopped talking because she looked up at the Doctor and the story didn't need anymore explaining after that. She felt it didn't because Amy and Rory understood...

She never would have left in the first place because she never had any intention of doing so.

They talked for hours after that—about the Meta-Doctor and how she handled life after the Doctor had dematerialized for what she thought would be the last time—and it was the kind of venting that Rose needed; telling them had somehow removed such a heavy burden from her chest. Vaguely mentioning their deaths, as it was still fairly recent, Rose noticed the time (evening, already!?) and announced her departure, emotionally exhausted from all of the storytelling.

"So, you continued to work on the dimension cannon even though you had...the other Doctor?" Amy had asked somewhere in-between the end of Rose's story and her departure.

"Yeah."

"Did he work with you?"

Thinking back, smiling occasionally as the memories of their bantering came and went, she nodded.

"He enjoyed it, said it was the most human fun he's had as a human!" Rose glowed with thought, tears swelled at the corner of her eyes.

"Did you love him? Did he know?"

Those questions, though innocent they were, caused her to 'notice' the time and call it a night.

She knew where Amy and Rory were headed, what they were thinking. They were wondering why the Meta-Doctor had agreed to work with her if it was for the sole intention of returning to _the_ Doctor and if because of that, his love was just a one-sided kind of deal. But it wasn't, at least not until towards the end, during their engagement and short-lived marriage. That was when Rose had learned to love the Meta-Doctor, that was when she accepted he really was the same as the Doctor she had come to know and love. He was every bit the Doctor, the only difference was that he had one heart. One lousy heart instead of two which meant that when that Dalek shot him, he stayed dead.

Once in her room, Rose fell to her knees and found it hard to breathe; she was gasping for air and ran her fingers through her hair. God, it hurt so much...all of this pain, growing within her...never dissipating, never lessening. Sometimes it felt like she could die due to a broken heart, being emotionally devastated, but she lived on despite her wishes that she had died with all of them.

Later, there was a faint knock on her door as she managed to calm down.

"Rose?" The Doctor's voice came through the door as he knocked again.

"Go away," Rose said loudly, not wanting to be hugged by him for the night because she knew deep down inside, that wouldn't make anything go away. It wouldn't make her feel better but she did wonder, she wondered how he coped...how he was able to still function despite the neverending loss of those he grew fond of.

Did he think it was sappy of her to cry and whine?

"You'll know where to find me if you ever get around to...needing me..." the Doctor trails off and Rose hears his footsteps stalk off the direction he came. She hoped she hadn't hurt his feelings, she didn't mean to.


	7. Two

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

**TWO YEARS AGO — PETE'S WORLD**

After the TARDIS dematerialized, leaving Rose where she clearly did not want to be, she walked away from the Meta-Doctor, brushing off his attempts to console her because she didn't want any of it then. She wanted to be alone so she could sort her thoughts.

All of that effort, it felt wasted...as if she spent three years—struggling with on and off depression—innovating that dimension cannon for _nothing_. Her rubbish attempts were sand spilling through his purposely spread fingers. She didn't _want_ to be left there at Bad Wolf Bay in bloody Norway, she didn't _want_ to have a life with a _copy_ of the Doctor. She wanted _the_ Doctor, she wanted to travel and see the stars for the rest of her life.

If that meant abandoning Pete, Jackie, Tony, and the Meta-Doctor just so that she could be with the Doctor, the alien she recognized as _her_ Doctor, then so be it!

Then somewhere in-between her cold shoulder and resentment toward the Meta-Doctor, and the days leading up to his proposal, a year's worth of struggle, Rose had a change of heart. It wasn't an immediate change, she didn't want to acknowledge him despite his attempts to make her grin and laugh. To make her focus on the now rather than what happened in the past; he wasn't purposely acting even more mad to make her forget her Doctor, he only wanted to make her see that he was just as good if not better than that slimy git for keeping her a safe distance away. Now he had a heart, just one heart, and he joked about a loony adventure he had trying to find Oz in an effort to have a heart. Not for courage but for a single life so he wouldn't have to keep running away.

When he told her that story, he could see it—in her eyes—that he started to get to her in a way she didn't want him to.

Within days of finally breaking through to her, edging on two weeks, the Meta-Doctor proposed to Rose and she acknowledged his existence for the first time then. She recognized him as John, not the Meta-Doctor and most certainly not as the _other_ Doctor; Rose spoke his name with clarity and acceptance not with distaste and hate.

Then they eloped almost as soon as he had slipped the engagement ring onto her trembling finger as she stood, knees bending as she tried to level her eyes with his though he told her otherwise, with her other hand clenching her gaping mouth. When he stood to his full height, Rose pulled him down to her by the collar of his suit jacket just as she had back on Bad Wolf Bay and kissed his lips with fiery passion. Only this time it wasn't out of desperation and an impulse to kiss him just because he finally whispered what she had waited, for so long, to finally hear him say.

They were happier then, pushing the sour memories of Rose's distance to stay at the back of their minds as they went on missions, or adventures as they liked to say, sent to them by Torchwood. There was always something and someone to save. When he, John, looked down at her with a gleam in his eyes, he liked to think he saved her from falling any further than she already had in the four years without her version of the Doctor.

In a way, he pulled her out from that hole—

—Rid her of despair and irrational decisions that were reckless enough to kill her.

In the midst of their frenetic adventures, three months into their marriage, Rose brought up a more domestic lifestyle where they could walk instead of run; sit instead of stand. John was adamant at first, he was bloody fine doing jobs that no sane person in their right mind would do but then he realized, how could anything be domestic with him around? A relaxed lifestyle would be deluded and tainted by the insanity that was him.

So he settled.

They tried, oh how they tried, to have children of their own. The first time, they were intimate and tender with each other, touching and kissing like they were fragile and easy to break. It was glorious.

"_Fantastic_," John had exclaimed when he moved to lay beside Rose as she curled up at his side, placing one of her legs over his own.

_You think so?"_ Rose was a bubbling sight to see, full of giggles and tickling grins as she avoided the Doctor's eyes; _her_ Doctor's eyes after having just done such filthy things to each other.

"_You were amazing, Rose!"_ John cupped her cheek before rolling her over, her bare back sticky to the damp sheets that were wrinkling at their excessive movement. Rose had gasped as he went back to kissing her neck and chest, always coming back to her lips (he would never get over the softness), before easing into her as he had before.

The second time, they weren't as afraid. They trusted each other to be gentle like they entrusted each other with their lives.

A month passed and Rose wasn't experiencing any of the normal symptoms that an expectant mother-to-be would, such as morning sickness. On their way to the hospital, Rose had teased John.

_"You sure that you're _human_? You didn't do nothing weird to me, did you?"_

His reply was much more serious than she had expected it to be. Did he take it more to heart than she had?

_"Oh Rose, my darling Rose, I would never do anything to hurt you..."_

She doesn't mention the first time she was left behind because that wasn't his doing and for the first time in a year, four months and twelve days, she blamed _the_ Doctor, the alien with two hearts. The last remaining Time Lord. During the silence on their way to the hospital, she forgave John. He may have committed genocide but he didn't leave her behind, twice, as he travelled amongst the stars.

_"I know..._" her reply was very late but as they got out of the car, she hoped he knew what she was replying to.

After the visit and when they got their results, John did the most unexpected thing! He broke down into tears as he clung to Rose's body, apologizing as if it were his fault.

_"Shut up you sap! It's me that should be crying."_ Rose held him at arms length while she stared into his brown eyes, the opaque of his eyes scarlet red from the tears. _"You're fine, you can fertilize anything you want..."_ She had said it so bluntly, no discerning emotion as she tried to act strong for him, and she felt her heart flutter and stomach tie into knots at the sight of his mopey frown lifting in a wobbly smile. _"_I'm_ the one who's barren..."_ the sadness couldn't be missed then.

_"Oh Rose, my Rose...Rose..._" John wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, stroking her hair as she slowly brought her arms to ensnare John's slender body. _"I'm so sorry..."_

_"You can be daft at times, you know that?"_ With that said, Rose started to cry and laugh at the same time leaving the Meta-Doctor to wonder how such a thing was possible.

And they came, the Daleks, five months after that day.

Barely married a year, unable to celebrate their first anniversary, those horrible things came and took it all away before they really had a chance. They were in the process of adopting before the fleet came. In those five months, John and Rose had long discussions (mainly at night) about the domestic lifestyle, it was an idea the Meta-Doctor was warming up to and before he could stop himself, he brought up adoption.

Unbeknownst to him, Rose remembered how he was around Tony and that's what forced any uncertain thoughts to leave because they no longer had a spot in her mind to pester her about the future. She and John were going to be fine, things were looking up after that suggestion, they could have a normal human life together (well, as normal as it would ever be with them around) and that's what John had promised. He promised.

_"I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you. If you want."_ What a promise it had been and as they visited agencies, applying for adoption, Rose felt it was safe enough to think that maybe, _just maybe_, they could spend the rest of their lives together in harmony.

How wrong she had been to find hope and grab onto it at the first sight of light at the end of long intervals of darkness.

She thought they could make each other better, just as the Doctor told her. She could change him just like she did with the Doctor, make him better like she had when she first met him when all he wore was leather and kept his hair short!

As soon as the Daleks came into Torchwood (but not without causing destruction beforehand), Rose immediately started to regret ever giving John the cold shoulder for a year, such a dreaded year she'd rather keep forgetting but then she couldn't, not when she saw those things. Why did they always have to return? Why couldn't they just die and stay dead? Why did they have to be filled with so much rage and _hate_?

Why couldn't they be more understanding?

As other employees within Torchwood started to go ballistic, Rose and John remained calm...as if it were just another normal day in the office, and to them, it was.

While Rose tried to get Jackie and Tony to leave the facility, swearing all the way to one of the emergency exits that it definitely was a bad day for them to come and visit, John tried to negotiate with the Daleks. He thought it would work, it normally did...they always managed to make everything better, Rose and him, and they would live to see another day—at least, that's what he thought. He was too full of pride and arrogance to see that the Daleks were seeking vengeance for the horrible act he had committed against their kind.

Giving Rose time to rush Jackie and Tony off, yelling at them to return to Pete's mansion, John asked how the Daleks were able to get into Pete's world. They explained, rather boringly, that another crack in time was opening and it allowed them to find him, or at least a version of him. When he tried to explain he wasn't the same alien that has two hearts, they didn't believe him; they didn't care. They'd kill any version of him if that meant their chance of survival would prevail against all else.

In the nick of time, John felt a hand take hold of his and they started running like the soil beneath their feet was falling into an expanding hole of nothingness, threatening to swallow them as well. And death was running after them, only it was in the form of Daleks. Hateful Daleks.

Jackie and Tony had been ambushed and killed on sight as they approached the mansion. Pete stalled the Daleks for as long as possible as he shoved Rose and John toward the direction of the underground bunkers, toward the safe room he had built in case of a disaster like this. Pete had tried to come with them, Rose begged him to, but at the last minute, Pete waved them off and gave Rose one last look of appreciation for all that she had done.

His daughter, brave and mad, shouted at him to come along as she and John kept running. In both worlds he would lose her, it was destined fate and try as he might, Pete was glad that it was John and Rose who could move on. He was glad it wasn't anyone else because no one else would know how to save the world, no one except Rose and the Meta-Doctor.

Then it John who was next to go and yet, he felt, if Rose had come back and tugged just _a little_ harder, he would have followed her into the room. They would have rejoiced in the fact that they were still alive, they had managed to escape the wrath of the Daleks, and then they would mourn the loss of the others. But Rose was alone in that room, left with only the dimension cannon that John had started to work on in private during the last five months and a letter from him, the human that was very much a Time Lord, _her_ Doctor.

The Doctor said he would need her, and he did, but so did she; Rose needed her version of the Doctor just as much as he needed her. They helped each other, they grew together in more ways than one, and it was taken away just as quickly as it had come.

Rose was stupid, or so she thought, for thinking it would only get better.

She had said travelling wouldn't be so bad if he had someone to do it with, she promised to stay by his forever so he wouldn't always be so lonely, and now she was alone. She could finally understand his demeanor when she first met him, when he told her to forget him (as if she ever would), and it was bloody miserable! She promised John, in her vows during their wedding, that she would be there forever because what fun is growing old when you've got to do it on your own?

And now that's what she has to do. Oh, how she needed him.

Within three months of the remaining year, Rose had finished working on the dimension cannon. Putting in extra time to secure its stability, Rose was able to teleport back into the Doctor's universe without any muck ups just as the crack in time, again, was closing—taking the Daleks with it, their interest set on something else entirely.

Leaving Pete's world behind, the chaos and destruction nearly enough to classify it as an apocalypse, Rose was so very glad to be back in the TARDIS. After all she had endured during her two years, it was like a breath of fresh air. It was enough to make her legs give way beneath her, it was enough to make her cry for days.

_"...Rose..."_ Rose can barely hear her name be said by him and before she can respond, his arms were around her. They weren't the arms she was used to but they were his, the alien with two hearts.

_"Rose!"_

She didn't know where she found it within herself to not fall and break down right then and there, it took everything she could just to contain herself and not pass out from exhaustion and the hunger growling in her stomach. Her feet hurt, her muscles were cramped, and her mind...she had a throbbing headache due to the lack of sleep and malnutrition.

Just as she's about to introduce herself to the two strangers looking at her with suspicion and mistrust, the Doctor pulls her off. This is what she missed, the instant familiarity and comfort he had with her—with any of his companions, really. He greeted all of his past mates like they were only just waking up for the start of a new day, like they hadn't left at all...

…Like Rose hadn't been trapped in a parallel universe, like the loss and disarray was only a terrible nightmare.

She wanted it to be okay again, she was tired of the never ending misery and its teasing games; for once, she'd like to see light at the end of the humid tunnel and have it stay there. But she had a feeling that would only be achievable through death. Rose would have to die if she wanted an everlasting feeling of happiness, wouldn't she?

Otherwise, everyday would be just as painful as the last and the only thing she could do was learn how to deal with it just as the Doctor had so long ago. With that, there was a glimmer of hope, maybe she wasn't so alone after all...he was there to understand her, and she to him. Again, the healing process could resume and only after death will she have recovered.

* * *

**A/N: **The title of this chapter-fic, _Doomsday_, has now changed to: _Always A Way._

I was listening to Manchester Orchestra's _"I Can Feel Your Pain"_.

I hope this wasn't too timey-wimey! I tried to explain the timeline between Rose being left with the Meta-Doctor and their reunion as best I could!


	8. Chirping

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

**FOUR DAYS LATER**

"Better?" The Doctor asks, giving Rose a fright when she crept from her room—having been sure everyone else was asleep—to prepare herself a small snack.

She had been dormant in her room for four days, sneaking out only to keep her hunger and headache at bay as she rest and cataloged everything in her room. Rose even flipped through the pages of her photo albums, making it a note to take photos of the Doctor as his current incarnation before he regenerated.

Muttering a swear word, Rose opened her door abruptly, leaving it open where it stopped, and grabbed her old camera. It was out of date, one that still used film, as she prepped it and scurried back to her door where the Doctor stood—a look of pure concern and concentration. Too late to react and use his hand as a cover, Rose snapped a photo and poked her tongue out between her teeth before cheekily smiling.

"Oi! Delete that!"

"I can't." Rose said back and moved her arms in whichever way to keep the Doctor from swiping her camera. He never liked having his photo taken, well, his tenth self liked it better that was for sure.

As the Doctor quit shuffling around Rose, demanding she hand him the camera right this instant, and they began walking side by side, Rose looked up at him and asked a question: "How do you deal with it?"

"With what?"

"All the pain."

This stumps the Doctor because it was unlike any question Rose had before, and if she ever wanted to become introspective like she had when they met Charles Dickens...well, he just let her have her moment.

"Oh, I don't know, Rose. It's been so long, I've forgotten by now!" The Doctor shrugs, hoping he made it clear that he didn't want to talk about it to her.

It was hypocritical, he thought, that he gave Martha, and Amy and Rory the privilege of knowing but Rose...he left her in the dark; in some, unmentioned, way he hoped he didn't have to explain it to her. He felt like he never had to with her around because she seemed to always understand being the compassionate ape she is.

"No, you haven't!" Rose cuts him off just as they're about to reach the library.

"What makes you so sure that I haven't?" The Doctor was liking this, he could feel her anger radiating toward him. It was powerfully intoxicating.

"It's...it's...I don't know!" Rose throws her hands up, flapping her arms around, in frustration as she lowered her gaze and turned to walk away. Catching her elbow, the Doctor pulls her back.

"No you don't!" The Doctor fights her swatting hands to keep her still, keep her there so they could talk. "You're not gonna leave that easily!"

"Oh yeah?" Rose quirks an eyebrow. _Wants a challenge, does he?_, she thinks and steps up to the dare. "_What makes you so sure?"_ She mimicked him from earlier, even adding a little sass as she wiggles herself free, realizing that the Doctor wasn't even holding onto her very tightly to begin with.

"Because you always come back." The Doctor blurts lucidly, soft and questioning even as he spoke.

"I never would have left..." Rose stutters throughout as she tries to move past his sudden statement that caught her off-guard; why must he insist on saying such things like that when she's focused? It disarranged any set plan she thought to already be in motion, then he slugs her over the head with such nonsense! Blithering ninny.

Maybe he wasn't the right person to ask about honing her sorrow, he wasn't very consistent...perhaps the darkness and guilt is what drove him mad. Would that happen to her if she kept on the same path?

"Don't I know it..." The Doctor comes to wrap his arms around her and dithers before pulling her into an embrace, not sure if she'd slap his attempts away. She was being quite feisty.

Testing the waters again, a simple tugging need that sang to him—tempted him—, as he tilted up her chin with his fingers and pecked her parched lips like he had days ago. Pulling back, eyelids in half-slits, the Doctor looks at her lips, at her tears that partially showed. The petal pink of lips looked succulent enough, drawing him in but there's a pull in the opposite direction, like someone hooked a curved cane around his skinny neck and yanked.

Fluttering her eyelids open, Rose watches his busy eyes move and still focus in one place but never for long as if he weren't allowed to look.

Arousing thoughts that provoked his emotions began fogging his perception, dizzying his judgement, but he doesn't act out on his desires because she's human and he's alien, and she's hurt; he didn't want to take advantage of her in such a way. Blimey, he wasn't even going to unless she said it was okay.

"Well, I'm off... Lots of books to reads, novels and poems, short stories and dictionaries! Books, books, and more books!" The Doctor lets go, paying no mind that his hands had dragged down to hold her close at the small of her back, pressing her against him. It didn't matter anymore, he was making haste into the library so that he wouldn't have to discuss what he did.

"Doctor!" Rose starts after him, her smaller legs picking up into a light jog as she tried to keep up with his unnecessary pace.

"Not now, Rose, I'm busy!" He waves her off, forcing his attention of the titles of books—many in different languages—as he tilted his head this way and that to read the spines.

"I can see that," she snorts and crosses her arms over her chest, his mind ambles to her breasts that had been touching his chest but not really all the same..._oh_, that woman! He angrily pulled a random book, one he didn't care much for, from the seventh shelf after ascending a futuristic-appealing ladder, and hopped down. "Just wait a second, will you?" This time it's Rose who overextends herself, nearly tripping in the process, as she made him slow his pace to a halt.

He's not looking at her, the book is suddenly much more fascinating than he would ever give it credit for, and his eyes skim the words that he sees but doesn't interpret to understand. He doesn't see the image portrayed by the words on the crisp pages, he only sees her...the pink and yellow girl now standing in front of him. Merely centimeters away, all he had to do was lean forward like a gawky adolescent suffering from horrible acne and trance her into a kiss.

_Pink and yellow_...he chortled at the thought, she nearly flushed coral when he said something or she felt embarrassed. and her hair, it was golden, almost as golden as the heart of the TARDIS.

"What're you on about now?" One of Rose's eyebrows angles down as her lips pull up into a grimace. Snapping his head upright, looking dazed and confused, the Doctor puckers his lips and raises his barely-there-eyebrows.

"Your pink and yellow!" The Doctor wasn't making any sense.

Was he really losing it? He looked like he might be.

"Pink and yellow? Doctor?"

She's pink and yellow? What could that mean?

"Rassilon, you're fantastic, Rose!" He closes the book with an audible clap, places it between his ribcage and arm, and captured her lips. "Clueless, you are." He murmurs into her mouth, bringing his hands up to her face, unsure at first—his hands dancing around in the air as he tried to decide what to do with them.

His kisses are feather light and it's like he's using his lips to grasp at her own, intending to pull away but didn't have the willpower to do so. When he deepened the kiss, feeling confident that she wouldn't shove him away and use the back of her hand to wipe her mouth (why would she? At this point, it was useless), the Doctor moved his hands through her greasy hair then down her back, along her spine, toward her hips. He followed the curves of her waist and stopped, suddenly incapable of venturing any farther than he already has.

Rose, mentally trying to assess the situation, placed her hands delicately on his firm—unfaltering—shoulders.

Why were they kissing?

Where did all of that come from?

Pulling away, the Doctor stood there, unwavering, with his hands curled around her hips. His stare was unapologetic but the lust was there, Rose swore she saw it, before it was blinked away and replaced with disconcernable dullness. Rose considered what her face might look like, did she look like a doe-eyed virgin with an intense blush? If she was blushing, she couldn't tell...there was heat all over her body, warming her skin.

"_What?_" Rose whispers, almost a hiss, as she thrusts her head forward and gives it a shake. "Are you sure you're all right, Doctor?" Rose went to touch his forehead like his alien anatomy would profess his delirium to her hand that would only give inaccurate readings. Wasn't his body temperature regulated to not make him too hot and too cold? What was it, didn't he just feel...indifferent all of the time?

Grabbing her wrist, the Doctor drops his hold just as quick as he was to latch.

Compassionate and caring; always worried about others before she thinks about herself and the moment she even tries to express herself, she's shunned and damned.

"...Fine as I'll ever be." The Doctor mulls aloud while taking a gigantic step back and meanders further into the library that, from where Rose stood, seemed to include every piece of literature from the past, present, and future. The light was set purposely low while furniture lounged around, looking plush and inviting...the library was meant to make any of its visitors feel at ease and at home.

"Doctor!" Rose calls out to him, suddenly feeling uneasy...like someone were watching her. Perhaps it was just the TARDIS but the old ship never gave such a queasy feeling to her before.

"What is it, Rose?" The Doctor responds, no doubt upset that she was still lingering about.

Scuttling toward the direction of his voice, Rose feels a violent shiver crawl up and down her spine as she tried to shake off the sprout of coldness. Making no mention of it, Rose eagerly intertwines her fingers with his, even though he was sat, reading, and keeps a firm grip. If someone or something was there to take her or him away, Rose wouldn't have it.

"What's this about?" The Doctor reckons, slicing into Rose's jumping thoughts. When he looks up, no longer caring about the book that lay open on the table. "Rose, what's wrong?" He sees how frightened she looks but she shakes her head, not wanting to cause alarm though she does anyway.

"Come on, tell me. No use keeping it inside," he taps her temple with his index finger.

Licking her lips, Rose battles a self-conflicting decision within herself as she makes a quick list of the pros and cons. He could cause havoc which means waking up Amy and Rory, or she could stay quiet and let her paranoia be dismissed. Eventually this feeling would become like her trying to resolve guilt and loss, it would go untalked about with no future mention.

She liked that better though it was unlike her, it was _better_.

At least, right now. She didn't want to spook the Doctor.

"—Rose? Are you hearing me, Rose? Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here..." Rose says coyly, a nervous smile causing her cheeks to lift up.

"Well?"

"Well it's just dark is all."

"Ask the TARDIS to brighten the room then, she won't mind...owes me plenty of favors anyway, isn't that right old gal?" The Doctor first spoke to Rose before turning his head the other way, as if speaking to an invisible servant girl waiting for his next instruction. He had mastered that technique.

"Why would I ask her to do that?" Rose asks, having spaced out—not really listening.

"You said it was dark... Rose, are you sure you're not the one who's fallen ill?" The Doctor looks back at Rose, giving her hand a firm squeeze. "_Rose?_" Panic, though he tries to be discreet, he's kicking the chair back (quite literally) and gets to his feet.

"Calm down, will ya? I'm—" She goes limp in his arms, the Doctor having just grabbed her in time, as her torso reclined back, her hair dangling as the tips swiped the floor occasionally.

Easing onto his knees, the Doctor lays her down gently and does his usual doctor stuff which meant he checked for a pulse and watched her chest rise and fall to make sure she was breathing adequately. She was doing both of things normally, like she were...

...Sleeping...

Then it hits him.

She was fully alert moments ago, she probably just woke up when she stepped into the industrial metal-like hallway.

Was it the Dream Lord?

_No_, can't be.

_Couldn't._

Could it? _How?_

* * *

Rubbing her head as she pushed up into a sitting position, Rose groans as if she had just bumped her head.

"Ow..." She utters and leans back on her other hand, peeping her eyes open but decided the room was too bright for her liking, the darkness behind her eyelids made her feel better.

When she finds it in herself to abruptly open her eyelids, blinking several times as her pupils adjusted to the extreme whiteness of wherever she is, Rose rotates her head—getting a good look at the room.

She was back...

"_Fair is foul, and foul is fair._" Comes an annoying-sounding voice, causing Rose to flinch as she turned her head toward the direction of the voice and found nothing to be there. "Ever hear of that?"

This time it was everywhere; beneath her bum, vibrating at her hand that pressed against the cement ground, ringing in her mind, tingling her bones.

"No?" Rose responds, struggling to stand as she winced and moaned. Why was she in so much pain?

"'Course not, you don't look the type."

Limping around now, Rose's head was groggy and heavy. All she wanted to do was shut her eyes and sleep, maybe when she awoke all of it would go away.

"Well, here's the dumbed down version: nothing is what it seems." There's a pause before the ominous voice goes on. "Make sense now?"

"Yeah, kinda..." Rose nods and clears her head with a shake then looks around again. It was the same room she was in when she and John were fleeing the Daleks.

"Good then you'll understand this _simple_ rule, at least I hope you do anyway considering your lack of knowledge about William Shakespeare is concerning."

"Get on with it." Rose lectures. Why was she back here? Was it all a dream? Had she fallen asleep without meaning to?

"All right then, no need to be pushy." The voice remarks defensively, "although you are quite the feisty one."

"Yeah, like I said, get on!" She really was beginning to get ticked off by this entity, whatever it is.

"You must decide what is real and what is not."

"What happens when I decide?"

"You'll die in the dream and wake up in reality."

"That doesn't sound too bad." Rose feels her shoulders go up to shrug and suddenly she sucks in a breath.

She wasn't this banged up was she? She didn't remember getting severely injured...

"But die in reality, Mrs. Rose Tyler-_Smith_, and you die in the dream. Can't have that now can we?"

"How do you know my name?" Rose looks up at the ceiling, as if the voice belonged to God—a cruel supreme being, contradicting his cliche depictions.

There wasn't a reply so while Rose waited for one, she shuffled about in the room and even jumped up and down once despite her agonizing protests. There wasn't a ripple that echoed from the floor up.

_Huh_, she thinks, _no dimension cannon_.

In the process of turning around, putting her focus on the door that led to the hallway, Rose heard chirping that was much too happy and jubilant before collapsing onto the ground like a wilted flower.


	9. Forgiven

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Awaking, on the floor but in a reasonably darker location, Rose looks around where she lay. A library much like the one from before. She hadn't moved but she was alone, wasn't the Doctor with her earlier?

Unknown to her, the Doctor was barrelling down the passages and burst into Amy and Rory's room—momentarily put off by them sleeping together in the bottom bunk bed—and shouts at them, scaring them awake.

"Oi! Doctor! A little respect..." Amy scrambles to pull the sheet up to cover her chest and looked down at Rory to see he had done the same. _What a bloke_, she thinks half heartedly, glowering at Rory.

"Dream Lord, Rose, psychic pollen on TARDIS...we have to stop..." the Doctor paces the room, his thoughts going thrice the speed his own verbal words are.

"Wait, say that again."

"Doctor, stop pacing, you're making me nervous!"

"The Dream Lord has got Rose."

"What makes you so sure?"

"She passed out when she was fine seconds before!" The Doctor stops his pacing and shouts directly at them, frustrated that such a dark manifestation would creep into Rose's head.

"Bloody hell."

"What do we do?"

"Find the psychic pollen! That's what we do!" As soon as he said that, the Doctor exits their room and starts sprinting down the bowels of the TARDIS.

"SHOULDN'T IT BE IN THE TIME ROTOR?" Rory skids out of their room as he rushes to dress himself and hollers at the Doctor.

"DON'T KNOW, ASK ME LATER!" Was the Doctor's reply.

Returning to Rose, who was cradling her forehead with both hands as she stood around in between a massively tall bookshelf and a large table with vintage desk lamps placed equal distances apart.

She swayed, woozy as if she downed an entire keg all by her lonesome, and found it hard to accurately place her footsteps. Tripping, starting to hear the chirping again, Rose falls forward and groans.

_So much pain._

* * *

Waking up in the terrifyingly pale room, Rose goes on full alert and doesn't waste time getting to her feet and bolts toward the door. If she had been here all along, that meant that she never left which meant the Daleks might possibly be waiting on the other side. Faltering for a moment, Rose takes a step back and then steps toward the door, pulling it open to reveal no emergency lights, no raging Daleks, and no fallen body meters ahead of where she stands.

Sighing, full of relief, Rose steps out into the hallway.

But it was too good to be true...at least, it felt that way... Didn't she lose everyone?

Or did she simply dream about losing everyone?

_To hell with it_, she figures, _I've made it this far..._

A little later, after she braved through the pain and started to move at her natural gait, Rose was nearing an elevator with a large sign that had an illustration of stairs on it with an arrow pointing right.

"Rose!"

Wheeling around, Rose's bruised and battered face (although, unaware of this) nearly causes the approaching tall, lanky figure to cringe.

"What have they done to your face?"

"Sorry?"

"Your face, Rose, what did they do to you? We've got an interview in an hour, they said they just have a few more questions before they file our papers! They won't approve us with you looking like that!" The voice is familiar, in fact it's too familiar and it's a kind of comfortable that pulls her heart in all directions.

Testing the field, Rose says his name in a questionable manner, unable to trust herself. "John?"

"Yes, Rose?"

_John..._

Her Doctor...

That alone brings tears to her eyes, each drop sliding down her cheek and onto her...her blouse? When she looked down, she saw that the soft pink was discoloured with a horrible blood-red. Dabbing a finger on the stain, rubbing her middle finger and thumb together—discovering it to be the same consistency as blood—she looks up at the figure who she now knows as John and gasps.

His hands catch her at her elbows just as her knees bend, she's slipping away...

But not without hearing the alarm in John's tone: "Blimey, what kind of training did they put you through?"

_It was a training exercise...?_

* * *

Disappointed when her eyelids come open again, one side of her head throbbing, Rose weeps and claws at the floor as she gets to her feet.

_John_..., her mind echoes and the faint sight of him as he stopped to watch her test the red on her shirt gave her such happiness, it made her heart skip a beat. She didn't want that to be the dream, it was lovely...

In this one, she's left feeling miserable and alone.

When she leaves the library and goes to the console room, she watches the Doctor run all around.

"What are you doing?" She asks, stepping down the stairs.

"And what do you think you're doing, Rose? What've you become? A daredevil all of a sudden?"

"What?" Rose tries to stop him but he slaps her hands away or runs right past them as he tears the entire console room apart. "What are you searching for?"

"Psychic pollen, have you seen it? It's got a blue look to it, small round balls..." The Doctor describes what he's looking for as he nears her. "And would you quit being reckless? Sit down! If you keep falling, you're bound to suffer severe head trauma! Rassilon, Rose, why must you be so clueless during times like these?"

Sitting down as told, having gotten the hint, Rose is determined to keep asking the Doctor questions: "During what times? What's going on? Why are you being this way?"

"Rose," the Doctor crouches at her level for a brief moment as his forehead creases, eyebrows raising, and continues on. "Just try not to get yourself killed."

"Tell me why first."

"Because, Rose, you're no good to us dead..."

"All right, that's reasonable, I suppose." Rose shrugs and yawns, starting to feel tired. Watching him move around was making her sleepy which was the opposite of what she had expected to feel. Eyelids feeling heavy, she drifts off to sleep.

* * *

"Are you okay, Rose?" John's voice breaches her mushy mind, making her feel all tingly and static-y.

"It was just intense training..." Rose smiles into his chest which was covered by layers of clothes. Dragging her hand along his torso, Rose tilts her head back to look up at him. He was sitting on the ground, beneath the buttons that told the elevator to go up or down, with his legs crossed and her body awkwardly but comfortably propped against his.

"Intense?" She could see his mouth lift into a grin, glad she was okay.

"Yeah, intense." Rose lets out a laugh and basks in this moment, never wanting it to leave her fingertips because it was fantastic and brilliant just the way it was. Bringing her other hand up to John's head full of thick hair that had a mind of its own, she willed his face to be closer to hers. "I love you," she confesses and kisses him, kisses him in a way she wished she had every time their lips met.

Parting a little, John says, "if you're acting this way because you think I'm still mad at you, I'm not."

"You're not?"

"Nah," John shakes his head and connects their lips again.

"...But...what _did_ I do?" Rose asks.

"Don't play dumb, Rose. We both know you're quite the polar opposite of dumb."

"I'm being serious, John."

"You threw my coat out the window of the top floor while we were working on the dimension cannon. Said it was a hazardous thing to wear, as if I don't know that!"

"Oh."

"You really don't remember?"

Feeling Rose shake her head, John sighs and kisses the outline of her jaw. "How sore are you?" He wonders aloud, in-between kisses.

Moving a limb or two, Rose moves beneath. "Not very, why do you ask?"

"We could have a quickie...if you're up for it." Even if it was difficult to see his face, especially with his shadow acting as a massive cover, Rose knew his eyebrow quirked in a suggestive manner.

"I thought you didn't like that, you always said it was only for those filthy enough to try it." Rose recalls, remembering one of their many discussions. "That's very unlike you. First domestic, now this... Donna really has done a number on you."

"Don't point that out!" John stops kissing Rose to look at her, the happiness in their eyes couldn't be mistaken for anything else. "It doesn't help that her DNA is floating around inside me."

"So, what do you say?" John asks after a while, helping Rose get to her feet. While she wanted to go forth with his suggestion, still surprised he'd even bring it up in the first place, Rose also knew she could pass out any moment.

"Maybe later, yeah?" Rose decides after deliberating for what felt like an eternity, sad that her hands couldn't roam his body the way she wanted; she couldn't kiss his hairy chest like she had the few times before.

John thought it was because of the meeting and when he remembered it being so close, he thanked her for remembering but in truth...she couldn't recall.

_Is this the dream?_ She felt bitter with that realization. Couldn't life just bless her just this once and allow this to be reality? Couldn't life _forgive_ her long enough to let her have this, just this one thing?

"I love you, too." John says randomly as they wait in the elevator, his hands in his pockets as she leans against him, his eyes trained on the numbers counting up. They'd have to meet back at their flat, change, and then go to the agency together.

When Rose looked up at him, his sharp chin that nearly came to a point and his old, tired eyes that still shined brightly with life, she didn't want this to end. She didn't want to die in this world, she didn't want to leave him..._not again_.

As they approached the cab, Rose poked John with her elbow and whispered in his ear; enjoying that their conversation was delayed, it allowed the quiet moments to be filled with unspoken words.

"How much?"

Grinning at her like the madman he is, John pecks her temple before lowering his voice so that the driver wouldn't hear: "I'll show you when we get home."

Suddenly feeling like she belongs back in this world, Rose doesn't bring up the meeting knowing they'd probably make an excuse—_ah, just got stuck in traffic_—and with that, she snuggles her head on his shoulder, falling asleep.

* * *

"This better be the dream," Rose immediately starts and tries to stand but a hand comes into contact with her shoulder, pushing her down. Looking at the hand, following the arm it was attached to, she locked eyes with Rory. Quickly putting her attention back on the Doctor who was now having a eureka moment, his hands obviously holding something, she continues. "because...I..."

"Because what, Rose?" The Doctor isn't as all-over-the-place as he was when she was last awake in this world, this calms Rose, even as he approaches her to show her the tiny balls that are known as Psychic Pollen.

"I saw John. Doctor, I was with John."

The happiness can't be missed and this made the Doctor feel a slight pinch of guilt but he didn't care.

"Rose, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Where were you last?"

"In a car."

Inhaling, as he ignored the dagger stares coming from both Rory and Amy, the Doctor exhales through his nose and bends down so that he was sitting on his toes, one of his hands on Rose's knees.

"I think we both know what you have to do, Rose." The Doctor was grave and he seldom ever liked delivering bad news but in order to expel the Dream Lord, it must be done.

"Can't you just blow those things out of the TARDIS like you did last time?" Amy gestures at what's in the Doctor's hand.

Shushing Amy, the Doctor shoots her a quick glare before turning his head back to Rose; she looked like she might cry and it broke his hearts seeing her in that way. Reunited in the realist way imaginable only for it to be taken away, Rory had been the same way. It was the perfect dream, it was an ideal world but there was always a price to pay in the end.

"Do I have to?" Rose starts to slouch forward, bringing her hands to her face as she felt the wetness stream down her face.

To Amy and Rory, she must be an emotional mess that never quit crying! How weak she must look to them.

"Yes." The Doctor said, definitively, with a single nod of his head.

"What if I don't?"

"You'll be in constant loop until you die one way or another."

That seemed like a good alternative, that way she could live out her life with John and raise children the way it was meant to be before it was snatched from her hands.

"What if this is the dream?"

"Only one way to find out."

Silence.

"I'm scared, Doctor." She starts to sob, covering her face with her hands so that way the others couldn't see despite the horrible sounds she was making. Hiccuping and screaming in the most timid way possible.

"I know you are but you've got to trust me, Rose."

Nodding her head, Rose dropped her hands and drew her lips into a straight line.

Eyelids drooping closed, her breathing becoming even and slow, Rose started to fall from the chair but was caught by Amy. She woke in the dream with a purpose.

* * *

This time she felt refreshed and a quick glance down, she saw that she was dressed in professional attire. From this, she saw that she was no longer in the cab unlike before; disappointed, she sits upright and spots John, in the bathroom, as he worked on his tie.

Patting her hair, it felt damp.

How had she showered and changed if she were immobilized?

"John?"

"Yeah, Rose?"

"Did you do all this while I was..." she has a hard time getting herself to say the word but she does anyway, "asleep?"

_That's a bit much_, she ponders and swings her legs over the side of the bed and went to go greet him in their bathroom.

"You didn't seem to mind." John shrugged, now fixing the collar of his shirt.

She didn't?

Blushing, Rose fights off a tempting smirk, and turns to leave the room she had just entered.

"What time did you say our meeting was?" Rose looks at the clock perched on what she assumed to be her side of the bed.

"Four."

It was three-thirty, exactly.

"Did you want to wait?" Rose goes to sit on the bed, patting a spot beside her as soon as John moved from the bathroom and started to button the cuffs of his shirt.

"That's not fair." John pouts, his arms falling limp at his sides as he drags himself toward her, pouting all the way until she was slowly lying back onto the bed. The sheets billowed around her, being crushed by his hands as he hovered above her, his eyes fixed on hers which moved, trying to memorize the way his face looked right now.

"They can wait." Rose is referring to the meeting, gasping when she felt her skirt rise up, one of John's hands smooths along the inner part of her thigh before he swirled designs on the back of her knee, causing her to jump beneath him, her back arching against his chest.

She never wanted to forget this.

He kisses her neck, sucking every now and then as he grabs a fistful of her hair in his other hand, tilting her head so he could kiss behind her ear, breathing into her ear to purposely cause her to react the way she is now.

"Nah, they can't." John shakes his head, kissing the corners of her lips which were parted as she focused on breathing, her fingers running through his hair, twirling strands around random fingers. When he pulls back, she look at him. "We'd never get approved. If I have to go through that process again, Rose Tyler-Smith, I won't be very happy with you."

She laughs, imagining how that would turn out.

He'd probably never want to try domestic again after that.

So they rearrange their clothes and fix anything else that looked disheveled, and went on their way.

The doom of it all doesn't fully set in until Rose sits in the backseat of the cab with John plopping down next to her, running his hand along the inner portion of her thighs once more.

_That's one way of doing it..._

Grabbing his roaming hand, Rose delivers a drawn out kiss on his lips, says that she loves him very much so and she wouldn't have it any other way. During this, seeing the confusion on his face as his brilliant mind tried to make sense of her berserk change in attitude, the cab driver was focused on driving.

"Rose, what's this?" John asks finally.

"I'm sorry."

"For what? I told you I wasn't mad..."

At this she stifles a laugh and shakes her head, telling him to not worry. What was she up to?

Announcing her love to him again, Rose unbuckled her seatbelt and reaches for the steering wheel, swerving it a hard right. She didn't know where they were, she didn't care because none of that would matter in the end. It was just a dream.

"ROSE!" John had screamed, grabbing her the best he could as the driver tried to take rein of the wheel again but it was too late.

* * *

Lurching awake, feet kicking out in front of her, Rose gasps for air and looks around.

There they were, Amy, Rory, and the Doctor, standing around her like she were some successful experiment.

"But that's not fair." Rose complains, trying her best to remember the dream but couldn't. It was as if it never happened and yet she knew it had, it was a strange feeling...but she knew she didn't like not remembering because some small part of her knew how hard she tried to remember in the first place.

"Good, she's good." The Doctor nods and heads for the TARDIS doors, and blows the psychic pollen out. Turning to face his companions, he makes an official declaration: "We are never, ever going back to Karass Don Slava ever again."


	10. Fake

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

"Who said life was fair? Certainly not Shakespeare, I can assure you of that my dear Rose Tyler-Smith." It's that voice again and it's booming, humming all around her body and when she looks around no one is there.

"...What?" Rose is really confused, there is a monotonous beeping at her side and she feels strange..._numb_ but there were pulses of pain spreading through her body like shock waves that faded and spread elsewhere. Her eyelids can barely lift open, her vision exceedingly blurry, and that's when she feels a throbbing in her head. She's lying down, on an uncomfortable bed with flimsy blankets that failed at keeping her warm, as she lifts an arm and discovers she's with restraints.

Tubes are pricked into her skin, the needles taped down and secured with occasional bandages. Somewhere behind her head, she can hear singular dripping and it's then that she understands where she is.

_How?_ Her mind echoes, it was the only thought in her mind that truly made sense compared to the strange images that made her head hurt beyond what should be allowed for pain. Placing her hand atop of her forehead, groaning weakly as she struggles to keep her eyelids closed, Rose hears another voice but this one didn't rattle her body that felt like shards of broken glass.

"Can you tell me your name?" The voice is tentative and soft-spoken. For a second, Rose wonders if this voice had just walked in and had just been asked to repeat her question or she too heard the unseen figure. Rose wants to ask but doesn't, something told her not to.

"...Rose Tyler..._Smith_?" She's unsure again, peeping an eyelid open, Rose looks out and sees a woman clad in faded light blue scrubs.

"Alright..." silence joined by the sound of pen marking onto sheets of paper. "When were you born?" The woman knew all of this information but it was protocol for the patient to identify themselves if they're in any way capable of doing so.

"Uh...the twenty-seventh of April, 1987..." Rose sees the numbers scroll in her mind much like a neon display telling passersby to have a good day; she didn't know what kind of day she was having instead she kept thinking she'd get to that later.

"Good..." The woman talks some more and Rose finds it hard to listen, a slow wave of pain medication (that was issued at set intervals) seeps into her body like slimy liquid that slowly worked its way along a straight, smooth path. Although Rose was incapable of completely remembering the event, she had been projected through the windshield of a cab and by some uncanny miracle, only suffered minor abrasions and a concussion that she could easily recover from with some therapy. It was an odd case, many of the staff that had worked that day when she and two others were brought in had observed her with curiosity. As if she were an alien with supreme capabilities.

Easing back into sleep, a sheet of blackness causing the outlandish images to fade into something else that revealed too much green and orange but she didn't wake up; Rose is standing outside of her body and watches as a man with red suspenders, a woman with a skirt and redhead, and a boy with glasses and hair combed over to one side look at her body. She got the distant impression that the man in suspenders had said something, like they were celebrating before it was immediately ruined by her.

The trio were saying things in short sentences that said more than what they led on, capable of understanding each other as if their thoughts were speaking as well.

"They don't know? I'm afraid I've given them too much credit when I first met them last time."

Jumping, startled, Rose turns toward the voice that caused every cell within her body to sting and burn. The man was her same height and reminded her of an English Bull Dog, the way his cheeks sagged around his mouth is what gave her the impression.

She doesn't ask to know who he is because she knows and she doesn't ask for an introduction, it was too late for one of those now.

Instead she asks one that keeps pressing into her thoughts even as she tries to suppress it, will it to be forgotten and die in another corner of her mind. "Am I...am I dead?"

It takes awhile for the being to respond and while waiting, Rose notices something that was strikingly suspicious; he's dressed exactly as the man with suspenders only he's also outfitted with a tweed jacket.

"Are you homeless or something?" Rose blurts out, gesturing with her hand toward his outfit. The man looks down, as if he's forgotten what he's wearing. "It looks like you went through his closet..." With this said, Rose returns her gaze back at the man that is now running around the console—inspecting the Time Rotor and waving his sonic about, trying to find something that didn't want to be discovered. "What's he doing?"

"Psychic Pollen." Is all the being says.

Hearing the man beside Rose snap his fingers, Rose looks back at him and without delay, feels the air be pushed from her diaphragm. It was as if she leapt from the top of a brightly-coloured house at a playground, instead of taking the stairs, and landed wrong. She couldn't speak or breathe but she wanted to.

The man is wearing something similar to what she would wear—a leather jacket, some kind of pink top or jumper, and flared jeans. He looked strange and it made her cringe so she looked away. She felt emotionally stunned that she couldn't remember the man running around but knew from past memories that he must be the Doctor and the two, alternating glances at each other, the Doctor and her limp body, that they must be his companions. She wanted to tell them that they were in for trouble and galaxies of infinite hurt that would never heal, a void would form in their chest and nothing could occupy it, nothing would ever come close.

But she is mute even as she walked toward them and stared at herself—blonde, tan, and a face that held a mixture of pain and relief.

"Am I dead?" Rose asks again, more solidity in her voice this time.

"Would you be here if you were?"

"I-I don't know." Rose shrugs and turns at her hips with her legs following, she looked curious and felt the same. She didn't know what to think or what to believe but it wasn't hard, she's seen too many things to become narrow-minded now so she didn't, it was impossible to ever be the eighteen year old she once was so long ago.

She did a lot of growing when she knew the Doctor and after, he opened her eyes to so many new things that she originally didn't think was possible or as possible as she knows it to be today.

"I have to remind you, don't I?"

"No." Rose shakes her head from side to side, not wanting to hear anymore of his sass. She's had enough of him for an entire lifetime especially dressed the way he is now.

"Then you know what you have to do."

With that, Rose crumples to the ground in a heap and an audible '_thud_' can be heard but only by the being that watched her from afar, taking enjoyment from the confused blonde. _Typical_, he thinks harshly and makes a joke about her being blonde before calling her a stupid ape though the insult was pointless—she's beginning to wake up in Pete's World so she wasn't able to hear him.

"Rose! Rose! Rose!" Her body was shaken lightly before the unsettling movement became frequent and intense, forcing her to open her eyelids and look at the arse that did the shaking. Expecting her arms to still be attached to tubes, Rose hesitantly raised her arms up in surrender and looked over her shoulder, lying on her side, at the criminal whose hands still grip the upper portion of her left arm.

_John._

It was like her brain sighed in relief at the sight of his untidy hair, she exhaled and a grin stretched onto her square jaw as she reached with her right hand to try and hold onto both of his that are too large for her so she settled on holding the fingers of one of his hands.

"John..." She whispers, voice cracking as she tried to wake up.

"Rose." John isn't as urgent as before and instead, settles onto the empty space beside Rose which she knew to be his side of the mattress. "We're late."

"For what?"

"Rose, we're late for work." John shifts to lie down beside her, his hands resting—folded—on his stomach as he looks up at the ceiling. "But we don't have to go." He turns his head suddenly, a devilish grin on his wicked face that somehow manages to make his archaic eyes look much younger than they are.

Rose giggles, scooting closer to snuggle against him as she buries her face into him, breathing in his scent. This moment was real, it felt too real to be fake, and she wanted it to be real. But everything jumped around too much...

She wasn't in the hospital and upon brief examination whenever she narrowed her eyes, she didn't see any bruises (although there are faint scars) and her memory was clearer. Pristine.

"What do you say?" John's voice, an alluring whisper, steps in the middle of her traffic of thoughts which causes her to flinch and cast her eyes up at his scraggly-looking face.

"Hm?" She hums, drawing designs on his chest with her finger as she averts her stare.

He made no mention of the hospital and she wondered why not.

John just sneers with a snort, giving his head a shake as he looks back up at the ceiling.

"We should have this painted. What do you think?" He's pointing up, imagining stars covering every centimeter of the plaster. When he says this, Rose leans back on her elbows and looks where he points. She remembers her time on the TARDIS, the walls in her room occupied with plastic stars that were green when it was dark and how much he protested her pleas. Wasn't this flat a lot like his ship in a symbolic way? A feisty redhead flashes in her mind, she thinks of Donna and smiles but John doesn't see that.

"What colour?" Rose asks gently, nuzzling against him as she resumed drawing on his shirt.

"TARDIS blue." He replied coolly, and wraps an arm around Rose as he spoke, imagining their room being the colour the his alien self has known for over nine-hundred years.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They're grinning, madly, as they look at each other. Rose propped herself up on her forearm and looked down at John, she wanted to tell him to shave the hair off around his mouth but she decides otherwise as soon as his hand comes up and tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear.

"You're beautiful." He murmurs, imagining that when they're older, she'll still look gorgeous as she does now. Even though he doesn't drink alcohol of any kind, he thinks she would represent a bottle of wine that only got better with age. John doesn't admit this though, a part of him was afraid that she'd laugh and reject his ridiculous thought because he knew how low her confidence had been in the past thanks to that Jimmy Stone coaxing her to drop out of school. Perhaps saying she was like wine would make her beam and gleam but he doesn't say anything, he liked having it as a personal thought.

"Same." Rose nods once and licks her lips.

She watches his eyes and notices that he watched her tongue slip in and out of her mouth; she wondered what he was thinking about. Without realizing it, Rose had thought aloud.

It was completely dorky and cheeky when he said it but Rose couldn't help but to blush brightly red. Her cheeks were as hot as the white part of a flame while he spoke, his finger smoothing across her cheeks that weren't as full as when he first met her but he didn't mind.

"I'm thinking about kissing you." He liked being able to share without having to hold back unlike his other self with two hearts who kept everyone at arm's distance, possibly further than that.

"Well, what are you waiting on?" Rose lowers her lips, closing the distance but not completely—she wanted him to do it.

"Rose Tyler," he starts and loses himself momentarily, pecking her lips once before drawing back. "You know it's never good to rush something that will be brilliant."

Rose quirks up an eyebrow, about to respond but doesn't get the opportunity as John pulls her down onto him, kissing her hungrily. Trying to kiss back with the same intensity and passion, Rose finds it difficult to keep up and drowns beneath him while she lay on top of him, her hands exploring his hair.

Suddenly she's flipped over and she's feeling nervous, her hands slipping away as he moves down her body that was covered by a nightgown which is very unlike her usual nightly attire.

"John?" He looks up at her, his eyes unfocused for a split second, at the alarm in her voice. Usually she was excitable and brave, just as willing to go ahead with any of his ideas to save the day, but right now she was...afraid. She didn't want to pass out again and wake up back in the TARDIS with the new incarnation of him, she didn't want to collapse there and wake up in this world only to find that time jumped forward in time. She hadn't had time to understand the hospital and what all happened—she blacked out, she couldn't remember the cab crashing and yet, it was the only logical explanation.

"Yes, Rose."

"Let's not."

Before moving to lie back down next to her, John had paused and then did his famous bottom-lip pucker and tilted his head to one side. He didn't ask for an explanation because he didn't need one. Instead he kisses just beneath her jawline before settling down beside her, talking about the ceiling again and what his plans were.

As he mindlessly rambled on, Rose began to drift back into sleep despite her struggle to not slip away—maybe if she refused to give in by moving around and all that, she wouldn't sucuumb and it would go away but it didn't.

* * *

"You're no fun. I think I might have to abandon you and find someone else to play with it." He's there again, standing elsewhere within the console room—unseen by the other three—still in the same clothes as before.

She wanted to have that life, she wanted to be with John again.

It was much better than having to live with the guilt of his death, the regret. He had died without knowing how much she had come to appreciate him, he didn't know how much she loved him. He'd never know.

That was the truth she didn't want to accept because it couldn't be true. He was too smart, there was always a way to escape and survive. He's the Doctor, or _was_, and he would have found a way to live but he didn't. He sacrificed himself, it was him...he gave himself over just so they, the Daleks, would leave. That couldn't have been the only solution.

Rose wouldn't accept that.

She was used to others, even herself, sacrificing their lives for him and when it was his turn to do the same, to save humanity, Rose resented him for it. She begrudged herself but she knew the Daleks wouldn't stop until they got what they wanted.

Glowering at the man, Rose thinks of a thousand different insults and witty comebacks but doesn't say any of them.

"They act so worried about you, Rose, when really..." he pauses for dramatic effect, reeling her in like a fish caught on a hook. "If you left, they wouldn't care. How would you like to return to them? You'll see that I'm not lying and you'll beg to go back."

"Back where?"

"To John. Haven't you been paying attention? I have. It's very obvious how much you want to be with him, so why don't you?"

"Because...I don't know." Rose stammers, looking down.

"Yes you do, don't play dumb. You'd kill yourself in a heartbeat just to be with him."

About to snap at him, Rose steps back at the truth in his words.

She would, wouldn't she? She fought each time the Doctor left her behind, she thrashed against his restraints that did nothing but slow her down. As a result, she became Bad Wolf; she hopped between universes for three years in search of him; she loathed John for a year, a silent protest, as she tried to get back to the Doctor. And now it was John that she was being kept from and given the chance, she would despite the risks and consequences.

"How about it?"

"That's bloody stupid!" Rose says after an awkward silence.

"You're lying through your teeth," he looks at her now with his Bulldog face.

Present her a challenge and she's determined to have victory; she didn't like to give up but wasn't death a form of resignation? Isn't it?

"So what if I am?" It would be reckless to kill herself, the Doctor told her that the world with John was just a dream...didn't he? Strange, that was fuzzy.

Deep inside, Rose gets the impression that both worlds are dreams and that she was somewhere else, asleep.

"Opportunity of a lifetime!" He smiles slyly, he enjoyed watching the wheels spin around in her mind as she solved problems.

Rose gets the distinct feeling that she shouldn't trust him.

She never did to begin with but somehow this moment, just before she passes out, confirms every suspicion she has or had.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry for the hiatus. I am trying to bring the story to an end. I've got the last chapter in drafting stages now that I have an idea of how I want it to go in order for it to end. I hope I can explain things and close up some holes that need explaining! Because of this, the ideas are slower, so the updates may be slow but I promise to complete this.


	11. End

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

She's on top of a rooftop now and from the far distance, she can see a figure running away from her and behind, she can hear John's footsteps pounding against the pavements until he comes to a stop beside Rose, his breathing heavy and quick.

"Never...underestimate...a...short...person." He gives Rose a look, a smile slowly spreading onto his face and it takes Rose a while before she can turn her head and face him. Instead she focused on the figure becoming a small point until it became nothing. John moved on after a while, accepting that Rose wouldn't say anything, and started to ramble about how he missed his dearly beloved respiratory bypass system and that you don't truly appreciate anything until it's gone.

Rose doesn't ask why they were standing on a rooftop or why they were chasing someone now far too gone because just like before, it didn't matter...somewhere inside, though it was a distant and fading memory, she knew it wouldn't. She knew that working at Torchwood meant chasing a lot of quirky individuals and running was always a required task, none of that came as news to her. But she wanted to know who they were chasing, how long had it been... How far ahead did she skip into the future of their lives?

When John approaches Rose once more, stepping up to stand alongside her and rests a hand upon her right shoulder, weighing her down, she flicks her head around to face him, her hair getting caught by the sudden breeze.

"I've always enjoyed watching you run from behind," he's smirking now and Rose can't help but mimic his facial expression, squinting her eyelids with the glare of the sun burning her eyes.

"Then you'll enjoy this." She says, sullen.

She doesn't give him time to answer, doesn't give him time to ask. Perhaps she shouldn't've said anything at all but she did and now, stepping away from him—feeling his hand slide down her backside—she steps up onto the ledge of the roof that acted as a kind of barrier. And she looked down, staring at the busy street below, the people looked like ants...but with no purpose, no order and no direction. Within a heartbeat, she'd stepped off the ledge and plummets downward, her hair felt like it was being ripped off of her scalp and the wind was pushing against her body though it didn't much to help keep her afloat. What a shame, humans didn't have wings.

Without a seconds wait, before she can even hit the concrete ground of the bustling London streets, she awakes with a surge of energy in the in-between, glowering at the being with a face of a bulldog. Then she'd ripped from that as well, no mention of goodbye or a last quip. It was a painful feeling to wake up so suddenly only to be forced from that lonely place, where she had observed the Doctor and his two companions as they fretted over her motionless body.

But they needn't worry long because she awakes, feeling as if she smacked the glass floor of the platform, and during all of this...all she can hear are the relieved sighs coming from Amy and Rory.

"Rose?" The Doctor comes up to her, the green light being emitted from his screwdriver zips all around her body before he pulls his arm back and looks at the results.

There is so much silence filling the void growing around her, a distinct understanding of finality...a definite conclusion of an end, that her journey with the Dreamlord was complete.

She looks at all three of them, not at all bothered by how intimately close they surrounded her. Returning her empty gaze to the Doctor for the third time, she feels resolute and decides that it's safe...

"I'm done..." Rose nods, bowing her head and tries to recover the memories but they don't exist...they never did.

"How..." Rory starts, clears his throat and swallows before continuing, "...how do you know?"

"For sure?" Amy adds to what Rory asked.

The Doctor looks back and forth at the married couple then kneels to Rose's lowered eye level, silent because they asked what he would have taken ages to say.

"I just...I do." Rose's voice cracks and before her own hand can reach up to wipe away the few tears that fell, the Doctor's thumb beats her to it.

"Well, I think the TARDIS needs a good rest and I know you do too so how about it?" The Doctor doesn't need to say where he's going next because Rose knows and the only response he can illicit is a single nod that his eyes barely caught when he looked down for a brief second to confirm the results on his screwdriver.

"Geronimo..." The Doctor says proudly and defiantly, rising to his full height and turns around while raising the hand that held the screwdriver up in victory.


	12. River

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

**ONE WEEK LATER**

"Doctor!"

"Why isn't she moving?"

"Doctor! Stop running around so much!"

"Bloody ship, really should work reprogramming her into my schedule."

"You don't have a schedule! Since when have you ever had a plan for _anything_?" Came three voices at once, all saying the same thing but with different phrasing.

"That's rubbish!—I charged her three days ago! We should be flying through the vortex by _now_!" The Doctor whines, having a fit as he goes beneath the console's platform to inspect the workings of the TARDIS.

"I don't think the TARDIS liked that very much..."

"Well she isn't exactly being very nice, right now, Rory!" The Doctor looks up at them through the glass floor, their shoe-covered-feet nearly covering his head.

Frustrated, Amy stomps her foot where the Doctor was looking up at them.

"Oi, watch it!"

"Maybe somethings wrong..." shrugged Rose, remembering the last time she was in Cardiff.

"Yes!" The Doctor shouts with exclamation, taking two steps at a time to get to Rose faster. "Brilliant Rose!"

"That's what we've been trying to _tell_ you before!" Amy and Rory retort.

"If you had just stopped to _listen_!"

It was as if three conversations were going on at once which made everything very disorderedly but the four, standing around each other, doing the arguing seemed very capable of understanding the different conversations. To any outsider, they all looked to be raving lunatics but in actuality, this was a normal day for them.

...If you exclude the TARDIS being kept in place by some 'unknown' force.

"Maybe we should investigate. Where do you think it would be?" The Doctor looks at the trio, expecting answers even as he waves them forward to get them to talk. "Come on, any ideas?"

"No...not really." Rose spoke modestly as she tucked a lock of hair behind one ear to look down at her feet.

The Doctor takes three, tall steps toward Rose and follows her hand with his hand, his fingertips feeling the softness of her recently shampooed hair. Lost, distracted for a moment, the Doctor nearly suffocates in his own happy thoughts—ever delighted that Rose was back, aboard the ship, with him...travelling, going on wacky adventures! Running! Just like old times and yet...

"Hello sweeties," both doors of the TARDIS swing open, swinging in place for a bit before they settled into stillness. All four heads swivelled in the direction of the voice, their eyes all focusing on the very curly-haired woman with a devilish, conniving grin on her face.

"River..."

_Just_ like old times except, not really.


	13. Energy

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

"Miss me?"

"As much as anyone could miss a frog!" The Doctor remarks, his tone bitterly sour despite their very non-linear relationship with its many twists and turns getting entangled and unentangled in thousands of different places on two separate timelines.

River tsks the Doctor as she approaches, wagging her finger at him while taking her time coming up the steps to be near him—oh, how he made her heart flutter even after all this time!

"Now that's no way to treat your _wife_, sweetie. I didn't marry a child and yet I think I have...or perhaps, I have the wrong the TARDIS by chance?"

"Perhaps you do!" The Doctor glares at her, almost pouting, stuck in place though he dropped his hand from grazing one side of Rose's face.

"Oh, well." River simply shrugs, his petty insults were like misting rain quickly drying on pavement streets. "And who's this?" She looks to her right, finally taking notice of the blonde woman—much younger looking than herself.

"Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth!" The Doctor steps in-between the two woman, almost worried that there would be a deadly confrontation; River could be very handy with an alien weapon.

"Relax, sweetie, no reason to become hostile..." As graceful as a swan dripping water onto its back, River diverts her attention back to Rose, a woman she assumes the Doctor must have met during one of his earlier incarnations. "Is that so? Nice to meet you, Rose Tyler. River Song." She extends her arm, forcing the Doctor to shift to the opposite side just a bit, and Rose shakes River's hand.

"See, no competition." River tilts her head at the Doctor, a sly smile split onto her face which greatly alarmed the Doctor.

"You do anything to her, and you'll face a side of me you'd rather not meet! You wouldn't like him..." He faces Amy then, "With permission from your mother of course..."

"Eh, don't involve me. This is between you two," Amy raises her arms defensively and gives her head a little shake, loosening wavy red strands from their place. When the Doctor looks at Rory, Rory also sides with Amy of course with a few more words and a stutter here and there.

"Oh, I've already been there..._done that_." River acts as if it doesn't bother her and in some way, it does. "Besides, do you plan on launching yourself into your next incarnation just to prove a point?"

"...Maybe." The Doctor stops whatever it was that he was doing (which was spinning his screwdriver around in one hand while bouncing it all the same) and spoke carefully, slowly, jutting his head back. When he looks at Rose, he is sure he saw the faintest hint of a smile appear before it was suppressed by a line of indifference.

"I've underestimated you then, haven't I?" While the Doctor was busy observing the facial expressions of Rose, River gave her a wink that goes unnoticed by Amy and Rory as well.

"You sure have!" The Doctor snaps his head back to face River once more and he looked very much like a frustrated child who couldn't comprehend a simple lesson at primary school. His barely-there eyebrows furrow down as his lips purse, jaw set, with the gleam of his eye replaced with a very brooding look... as if he were prepared to give one of his many famous lectures to an alien that would cause them to scamper off with their tail caught between their legs! River rather liked that look, it wasn't intimidating to her at all by any means but it was deliciously handsome of him to do and he should know what it does to her knees.

She doesn't notice it then but the attachment he has toward Rose was very plainly obvious to Amy and Rory, and they were busy exchanging more worried expressions—how would all of this be resolved? Rose just found out that the Doctor is married, surely that would cause a lot of questions to arise...one question being a general one asking about the background of River. _Who is she?_ Rose never met River, never, never had the 'misfortune' (as the Doctor would later say) of doing so.

* * *

While Rose was away, possibly in the kitchen making herself a cup of coffee, the others remained in the main part of the TARDIS; the Doctor twirled around excitedly when the TARDIS gave a brief lurch which caused him to shout his current catch phrase: _geronimo!_

With that, River helped the Doctor along all the while, talking until she got a bright idea to tease the Doctor.

"Honestly, I was expecting you to say that Rose Tyler was cool." River mocks the Doctor half-heartedly, helping him pilot the TARDIS now that she wasn't keeping it held to the ground like a hostage just for her own amusement (still hasn't gotten around to that part yet, the Doctor was just glad that the ship could _finally_ move).

"So you could shoot her?" Rory speaks up, leaning against one of the padded railings with his arms crossed over his chest while Amy sat in one of the two brown seats positioned around the console. No one else is let in on the joke which has River cackling maniacally mentally, even her own parents are taking her words seriously...well, she did a very good impersonation of a serious tone no doubt about that.

However, thanks to the vague mentioning by her father, River is reminded of the few hats the Doctor proclaimed to be cool along with bowties and a smile, a genuine smile that echoed amusement, widens onto her ever-so-grave looking face. She didn't shoot the bowtie, didn't shoot Rose...all is good but _they_ didn't need to know that.

"No, I would've let her talk first and then carefully weighed my decisions—"

"You would've shot her." Amy cuts off River, knowing that by _carefully weighing_ anything, River intended to think quickly and ask questions later.

"Honest to God, I wouldn't've!" River resists, working with the last few buttons on the last panel—while correcting the Doctor's errors—before turning to face Rory then Amy, then pacing around the hexagonal platform. She even raises one of her hands as if she were swearing on the bible in a court of law, promising to tell nothing but the truth, while her other hand rests against her chest as if she were shocked by their accusations.

"She's not a _thing_, if you've noticed." The Doctor finally musters up the words to say when earlier all he could do was stop in his tracks, plenty of times, and give River a blank facial expression, hiding his anger and the offense taken while his jaw kept clenching and dropping as he thought of what to say to her.

"No, I thought she was just another one of your famous items that you liked to wear or carry around!" River perches herself on one hip, hands resting at her waist, while she gave the Doctor the most deadly of stares that he has ever had the luck of witnessing.

Again the Doctor is back to opening and shutting his mouth, anything that was a coherent thought now scattered like marbles being hit by another of their kind. Sharp tongue, she has. Defeated, and muted, the Doctor exhales through his nose sharply and turns around, putting all of his attention back on the time rotor and everything surrounding it as he grumbled to the ship—a rude word or two slipping up pertaining to River.

* * *

"You're married to her? Did you ever plan on telling me this?" Rose asks the Doctor when they're alone, in her bedroom that wasn't as dusty as it had been during her absence.

"Yes, and yes and no." The Doctor sways his head from side to side, lips puckered with his eyes narrowed—looking elsewhere, too ashamed to meet Rose's unwavering stare. This made him bloody nervous! He expected a scolding and a painful spanking to the rear, honestly. He loved many of his companions, in different ways...ways that Rose would never understand.

River was a very complicated way to understand.

"Well, which is it?"

"Yes, yes, and no!" The Doctor repeats himself, pushing up spontaneously from sitting beside Rose on her bed and starts to walk from one point of her room to another repeatedly, she watched some of the time.

"Yes, yes, and no?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"All right then, no need to shout!" Rose exclaims, snapping her head immediately to him when she had slowly shifted her gaze to stare at her door not too long ago. "How long've you been married?"

"Long enough to want a divorce, she's a handful." The Doctor exhales and stops, weary, in his tracks, slouching forward with his arms dangling down toward the floor.

"Looks it." Rose shrugs which causes the Doctor to chortle, grinning at her response.

"I like you more, however." The Doctor approaches her and to Rose it feels very similar to their first reunion when she appeared on the TARDIS, the way he pinned her to the door with his arms on either side of her. In a way it was alluring and terrifying all at the same time.

"Now all I'm missing is a ring." Rose quips easily, almost too easily, and just as quickly as she was to remember her alone time with the Doctor, she remembered John—her mind rebounded, thinking of a very hazy experience that the Doctor along with Amy and Rory explained was another classic example of the Dreamlord which manifests from physic pollen and a very guilty, dark conscious. The trio knew why, thanks to Rose having recounted John's death, but it still didn't relieve her of any remorse...hell, she's not yet gotten around to properly mourning his death. Mourning him was becoming more like something that would happen whenever she made time for it, like it were a task she'd been putting off.

His hands fumble on Rose's thighs before sliding off, pushing down into her duvet that crumpled beneath his hands. "Did you forget? We're legally married across seventeen different planets, signed contract and all that fancy business!" The Doctor points out with a reassuring grin, confident.

"Yeah, all to save our arse on seventeen different occasions!" Rose remarks, not picking up on his flirtatious hints because she was being pulled down by an unseen force—emotionally reserved—and when her eyes flickered to him for half a second, she noticed the dread pool into his own. His facial expression morphed into a solemn appearance of dread, close to matching how she felt.

"We never got to celebrate, Rose Marion Tyler." He says her whole name, not using the last name his former incarnation was familiar of using at times because in his mind, she didn't marry the copy with one heart and half of Donna's DNA. In some hopeful way, it kept him from remembering the heartbreak as he watched Rose kiss the Meta-Crisis Doctor in such a passionate way he always dreamt of; but the privilege wasn't his to take so he refrained, keeping at arm's length and yet, he held onto so tightly he was certain her legs would cave in.

"Why don't you celebrate with _River_, seems more proper anyway."

At that statement, the Doctor released a rush of air in such a manner that caused his fringe to flap in an upwards motion. "What is she anyway? A Time Lady that you came about during your travels?"

It was ironic that Rose refer to River as merely a _thing_ when River could have easily done the same to Rose. Compared to River, Rose was much more immature but if he compared present Rose to how she was when she was eighteen...well, she would appear to have definitely matured.

"Why are you being so pointlessly silly, Rose? One moment, you're up and then the next, you're down..."

Rose wants to yell at him for so quickly dismissing what she can't even _remember_ but she knows John, _Tentoo_, was there...accompanying her loneliness and comforting her in ways she had taken for granted or ignored for too long. But here, _now_, she still hasn't allowed herself enough time to sit and mourn... Even those four days when she isolated herself in her room, barricading herself there while she ignored the gurgle of her stomach and the clenching thirst at the back of her throat, she couldn't bring herself to find ways to forgive herself. She never could.

"_My husbands dead! What's so pointless about that!?_" She shouts in her mind, scowling at the Doctor with the fiercest expression she could warrant. The Doctor sees this, she knows he does because she can fill the intensity of the air around them thicken as it tightens around their bodies like metallic rings. Their facial expressions matched, resembled each other because they melded together just as easily as if they had never been separated, still as liquefied as glass enduring unimaginable heat.

"I..." The Doctor stammers but the words don't go any farther, suddenly he's tongue-tied. "I'm sorry, Rose, I didn't mean for it to come across that way..."

"...I know..." Rose whispers, lowering her voice just as he had. The edges to their voices not as sharp; the points become rounded and so she sounded soft and weak, destructible and nothing in his hands...putty.

"I had to marry her for the same reasons I had to marry you seventeen different times."

"Would...would you have married her sixteen more times in order to save the lives of everyone?" Rose asks simply, curious and the Doctor becomes stumped, he even puffs out his cheeks in consideration.

"Nah..." The Doctor replies after what seemed like eleven minutes of waiting, allowing her mind to come to many conclusions and assumptions. His tone matches the movement of his hand, waving the question away as he dismissed the very idea though he knew he would. As much as River crawled underneath his skin, he liked her. What a tease.

Nevertheless that doesn't matter at the moment because as soon as he hears Rose began to chuckle, he succumbs to her. The same hopefulness, maybe even a bit of selfishness, that she was meant for him and he was meant for him...two puzzle pieces snapping together like attracting magnets with a strong pull.

Then, without pause to inhale steadily, the Doctor crawls onto the bed, his body a blanket draped over Rose's. They don't kiss, his mouth lingers at the crook of her neck, breathing...just breathing, unnecessarily, he didn't _have_ to breathe but he wanted to, he found it overwhelmingly intoxicating the way he could feel her nerves rub against his own like static charge.

Energy, hormones, bodily chemicals... So much more than Rose would ever feel, it was blinding and narrowing, to a point where the Doctor found himself incapable of breathing even if he _wanted_ to. Without thinking, the Doctor eases his fingertips onto Rose's temples then traces the curves of her arm until his fingers capture her own, bringing her back into everything that he feels on a constant basis—the overpowering sensation of everything slamming into every direction that is him and he supposes that it's only normal for him just like the speed of the Earth goes unnoticed by humans because it's _normal_, expected and something to not really pay attention—but he watched the arousal on Rose's face. He held on even when he found himself seeking to pull away, searching the many depths of his souls for a plausible reason to explain he would release her hand.

They aren't kissing, they aren't joined at the hip...and yet, the desire to be touched so intimately was there, lusting in both of them.

He stays like that a little while longer, holding her hand, savouring the confliction of emotions that cross over Rose's face as she goes through the motions, her mind so unadapted to feeling _everything_ with such intensity. It made her forget, for the minute he held her hand, that she was...human; _is_ human. Without realizing it, her grip on his hand had tightened, bending his fingers back as she arched against him, letting out a small cry—whether from pain or pleasure, or both, the Doctor didn't know nor did he think to ask.

"I like you so very much, Rose Tyler." The Doctor whispers into her ear, lips tingling the rim of her ear, breath slithering in until it tickled and caused her to convulse slightly against him, the feeling more intense than it normally would be, as her other hand gripped onto his shirt—nails digging into his skin—squeezing with all her might. She was gritting her teeth.

A thought crosses her mind, a memory when she first met the Doctor when he wore leather and dark-coloured jumpers.

When he let her feel the speed at which the Earth traveled and spun around the sun, she didn't react like this...

At once the Doctor releases her hand, he probably sensed what she was thinking and wasted no time to distance himself. Rose, however shocked, was left breathless when he jumped back up to his feet and fixed his bowtie, straightening it though it went lopsided again. Rose, passed any boundary of hesitation, leaps up and grabs the collar of his shirt and jacket in two fistfuls as she willed him down to her. He's squirming, fidgeting about as he didn't quite know what to do with his hands though it wasn't like when Amy advanced on him because this was Rose, _his_ Rose.

The pink and yellow human girl he first encountered in the basement of a department store; the girl that lived in Powell Estate with Jackie, her mum, and dated a boy called Mickey Smith.

Several emotions she must be going through, he realizes then, so many that she may not recognize nor know where to place; he could _feel_ what she felt, he could hear the thoughts thought they weren't as clear as another Time Lord's thoughts would be. So many emotions, in such a short amount of time...

And here she was, kissing him because that's what she wanted.

When he finally gets around to settling his arms around the small of her back, Rose pulls her head back to peer into his eyes which were at half-slits now.

"I like you very much too." She concurs, minutes late of replying.

She doesn't apologize, doesn't tip her head or narrow her eyes; only steps away, feeling his hands slip back down to his sides, and stares at him.

Silence.

"So...who is she, Doctor?"


	14. Dancing

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

"An impossible woman, human with Time Lord characteristics...strange, I know. Thought so myself...still kind of do." The Doctor says with a slow spreading smile triggered by the engrossed and indifferently impressed facial expression put on by Rose. He sways from one foot to the other, as if he were dancing alone, without a partner, until he extends his arm out to Rose, his fingers beckoning her to come along and so she did just that. Pressing her left hand into his offered one, Rose gets up after she had perched herself back onto the bed and stands there, watching as the Doctor swayed until his other arm wrapped around her waist and reeled her in tightly, leaving no room for her lungs to fully expand and retrieve a complete breathe of air.

When he did that, Rose had been in the process of asking _how_ until any remaining air had been forced from her, hitting his face, but the Doctor made no mention of how bad her breath smelled despite it tasting as such. He acts as if it doesn't faze him and carries on with the conversation at hand, his sensitive ears picking up on the word hardly spoken. Every bit aware of his actions, the Doctor lowers his head, mouth and nose faintly nuzzled into a portion of Rose's hair closest to her ear, lips tickling the folds of her ear though there was the constant rubbing of static, her hair a sheer layer.

"Amy and Rory," the Doctor begins, voice lower than a whisper yet it contained every echo of a intimidating demeanor, a tone only used to frighten enemies threatening to put an end to all human life. Nonetheless, Rose listened on with the deepest want to discover, a hobby she had taken up to enjoying during her travels with the Doctor during her earlier years. "Well, you know how humans act when they first marry..., only thing is, the TARDIS must have interfered. Ship full of mysteries...I quite like that, _ooh,_ _box_ full of mysteries!" He sounds excited somewhat, even pulls back to get a quick glimpse down at Rose who was grinning, slightly motioning her head back and forth; hoping he had impressed her with his words.

While the Doctor adjusts, loosening his hold around her waist as they moved from one foot to the other, dancing inside of a small, invisible, circle that encompassed them, Rose found herself agreeing to how strange it was...it couldn't be true. River looks old enough to be _their_ mother, she pondered about how that was possible all the while a small sliver of who she used to be concluded that to be impossible only for her to dismiss the arrogant idea as rubbish. How dare she think that paired with all her travels? She'd gotten the chance of a lifetime, _she_ got to live in her small life than those of elderly status who lived with little adventure staining their youth.

He continued to speak and Rose felt enchanted, amazed that he could make such a simple explanation sound _sensual_ even as they danced in their tiny bubble somewhere in-between Rose's bed and the door that leads into her room. When Rose sensed the Doctor had quit speaking, having quit listening to him when he began whispering sweet nothings into her ear about all of time and space (having heard it 'all' before), Rose wills herself to anchor her head back to gaze into his eyes; his ancient eyes that exposed all of who he was, is, and will be...the same eyes that look just as wild and young as they do stoic. Dancing, still, they study each other as if a story could be shared without verbal communication and one could, only if Rose had more Time Lord-like characteristics like River...like telepathy, then the Doctor would be able to sum up his entire life thus far in form of many things...words wouldn't be required or necessary because feelings and images would suffocate her mind. And Rose would understand just like she always has.

A smile plays on their lips, one triggered by the other, and Rose draws in to be close to him again, resting her head upon his well-defined shoulder.

"You really wouldn't marry her sixteen more times? Even if it meant worlds would be destroyed?" Rose asks tentatively, eyelids drifting closed as she placed one hand on his second heart, feeling the rhythmic pulse faintly drum against the palm of her hand. She doesn't mind the silence that caters around them, hugs them just as they hold each other and sway to music that never played, because it's become their in-between to visit, where words cannot venture...a safe haven, almost, to think of different things the other would say, to safely assume and hope for the answer they want. To hope against reality.

Rose knows he would but she asks anyway because she hopes the answer would change, she hopes he meant it when he said '_nah_' but she knew otherwise not to believe him for the Doctor was no stranger to lying; deceiving came as second nature to him at best.

"Brilliant, fantastic, human Rose...I have loved and I have lost, I've seen the birth of planets and the demise of them...I've walked away so many times in the past before I met you, when I was so full of hate and vengeance. You remember, don't you?" He looks down at the crown of her head, she didn't bother looking up as she was now tracing designs with her finger onto his shirt over his heart, he chortles through his nose and smiles, pecking her blonde head. "The last Dalek in existence and your words...your _naive_ words got me thinking and I let it get away, and they're what took you away! Them and those bloody Cybermen! _Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade!_" The Doctor grumbles the last few words mockingly, even tilting his head from left to right as he remembers her nearly being sucked into the Void.

"Do you honestly think I can walk away now? After all that hatefulness that you had replaced with empathy, you really think I can go back to who I was?" The Doctor half-expects a response though his question was rhetorical. "Personally," He continues before she gets a chance to even inhale and fixate her mind on a word, "I think this incarnation of me looks best in a tweed jacket rather than leather, more my style...new me, new preferences." He summed up the aftereffects of regeneration just like that, just that simple but it wasn't; nothing was ever since with the Doctor involved.

"Have your feelings for me changed as well, Doctor?" Rose asks, the motion of her finger goes still and the Doctor feels a qualm rush over him from behind, pushing a veil over his head and he wishes she'd go back to drawing on his chest but she doesn't; though he will never admit, that sudden lack of movement made him uneasy. Tension boiled within him, coiling his limbs tighter together.

"New body and all..." Rose adds, sulking almost.

"Did they change when I wore trench coats and striped suits?" The Doctor quirks an eyebrow, remembering his former body—head full of hair and a more youthful appearance for his handsome looks.

"No."

"Looks like you've got your answers then, haven't you?" With that said, he cups her chin and brings her face up so he could look at her dead-on, his resolute stare shifting back and forth between her own. He wanted to kiss her again, slow kisses that lingered, but he doesn't, can't bring himself to.

"Can she regenerate like you?"

"Not anymore, gave them all to me. Guess I left that out when I was babbling, eh?"

Rose giggled.

Rassilon, oh how he loved it when she did that!

"Yeah, guess you did. Wasn't too keen on listening, to be honest." Rose grins a tongue-in-teeth grin when she sees the Doctor's face go from relaxed and casual to shocked and amazed as if no one admitted that before.

Huffing in response, the Doctor dips in to capture her lips yet again, only breaking apart to mention how much he loves her laugh which causes Rose to grin, lips spreading against his.

"Rose, oh, Rose," He whispers into her ear when they collapse onto her bed haphazardly, the bed making a _thunk_ noise while the mattress tapped the base of the bedframe briefly. "I want you to feel everything." He finishes then starts to kiss a trail from her temples down to her jaw up to her lips, his hands slip beneath the fabric of her shirt—a camisole as the Doctor would come to find out—and feel along every curve foreign to his hands.

Both undressed, her nude flesh pressed against his, Rose guides her hands along the sides of his face as he reaches back to pull the covers over their bodies; everything hidden except for their heads, poking out from the tops of the blankets. He pauses and gives her a lasting look that sears itself into the forefront of Rose's mind. Without further ado, distracted by the Doctor's nearly boyish-looking face at that moment then his lips on hers, Rose arches against him at the sudden burn cutting into her down below before it eased into a want for more, a _need_ for physical satisfaction.

His hands journey along her waist, over her breasts, over her shoulders, down the length of her arms to her hands that searched for anything ground to the sides farthest from her. The Doctor continues this until they flip over and Rose's fingers tangle themselves into his unruly, thick hair just as his own hands find her hips. They hardly break for air, only when Rose desperately needs to breathe do they part and during this, the Doctor kisses the column of her neck and anywhere that was nearest.

By the end, the blankets are disheveled and resting over their knees, their legs still entangled as Rose moves to lie on her side, snuggled against the Doctor, one ear pressed against his chest while her unrestrained hand sought the drum of his other heart. The Doctor stroked her hair, moving stray strands from out of her face as he stared at the ceiling, regret consuming his entire being.

They stay like that, muted and reserved, for what felt like infinities—the same kind of infinities the Doctor has known longer than any human ever could.

"I love you." Rose says, barely above anything less than a whisper. She hopes he didn't hear her say it, she hopes for the reason that she didn't want to hear herself commit to him again not when she could be gone within the snap of a pair of fingers.

When he doesn't respond, Rose takes this as a good sign—that he didn't hear—and she sighs, almost relieved because it would be treacherous to the memory of John. Then she gets muddled in her thoughts because John was essentially the same man, even accepted it herself after denying it for so long, as the Doctor instead just with one heart and one half Donna. In doing so, she falls into a hazy slumber that often resulted in the confusion between actuality and dreams.

Close to sleep but not quite deep enough, Rose nearly misses the Doctor's late reply but brushes it off as a dream; a creation of the mind...one of many wishes.

"I love you, Rose Tyler."


	15. Trees

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

When he is certain that she is asleep, the Doctor redresses after sidling across the bed to the edge, falling off rather suddenly and rolling over onto his stomach with his palms open and flat against the floor with his knees bent as a fifteen degree angle, the Doctor recovers quickly and jumps up with a start. Peeking at Rose from the corner his eyes, catching sight of her bare shoulders, and hands now moving to rest comfortably beneath her cheek against the pillow, the Doctor returns to dressing himself fully—even attempts to straighten his bowtie. Once outfitted in his usual brown tweed jacket, pants that stopped at his ankles, and his laceup boots, the Doctor looks himself over in the full-length mirror a ways away from Rose's bed before returning and pulling the covers up and over her shoulders.

He smiles when she burrows into the bed but that smile goes away as soon as it came for he remembered what they had done as he had not slept and only distanced the thought until now. They mustn't do that again..._couldn't_ because she is, well, _human_ and he's a Time Lord and that kind of thing just doesn't _happen_. Well, it _shouldn't_ happen and yet it had, and he quite liked it...seven years, he waited—_but_ it must not happen. That would be the first and last time, he'll swear on every blood-thirsty planet he's been on. He'd rather fight off Daleks and Cybermen than go against a swear. No other companion has been given such a rarity, and Rose will be the first and last of the companions to experience it.

With that, adjusting his jacket and pulling on either end of his bowtie, he perked up his head to appear more confident and cockily proud (he had his reasons, one-thousand plus years of living...he's had enough time to gain a _plethora_ of reasons) and headed for the door, one hand around the door knob, twisting and pulling the door open as he slid out from what little space he allowed himself. First, looking right—spotting nothing, _no one_—then left, both hands come flying to his chest with an audible slap as his jaw started to gape open.

"What were you doing in..." The tall woman with wildly curly hair struts toward the Doctor, eyes focused on the door knowing a title was inscripted there. "Rose's room, Doctor?"

His voice became pubescent-high then, motioning with his at the door and any other direction possible as his mouth opened and shut repeatedly; River looked on with amusement glimmering in her eyes. "I, uh, ah, well, you nearly gave me two heart attacks!"

"Trying to distract me, now are we?" River bit the inside of her cheek and squinted her eyes at the Doctor, tilting her head and raising her eyebrows for added measure. "Wouldn't want to do that? Not when I've got a gun strapped on just about every part of my body, visible and not."

"Oh, ...shut up!" He barks and turns at once, away from her, with his hands clenched into fists as he marched off in the direction of the control room with River following close behind.

"What were you doing in her room, Doctor?"

"Why must you know? That's none of your business! You're incredibly nosy for a criminal."

"In case you've already forgotten, I was pardoned! And that's beside the point, I want to know what you were doing in her room...simple question, which deserves a simple answer, don't you think? It's only fair. Married couple and all...oh, and, I gave you all of _my_ regenerations...didn't _have_ to do that—"

"Oi!" He stops and turns around, tweed jacket getting caught, folded in on itself, between his side and arm before he lifts up his arm and points, jabbing his finger at her, poking air. "I've told you lots of times not to do it but what do you do? You do it anyway! Now, I'm not going to tell you...even if we're, well you know, married."

"What? It's not like you two shagged, is it? What's there to be so evasive about all of a sudden, Doctor? What's gotten into your britches?"

The Doctor blushes a violent shade of crimson and at last minute, turns away, again, and resumes his journey back to the control room where he hopes Amy and Rory (or at least _one_ of them) will be so they can distract River from him. River didn't catch the colour flush from the Doctor cheeks and kept pestering on which bothered the Doctor more than it should have, if perhaps he hadn't already possessed a guilty conscience.

"All right, all right, if it'll get you to stop yammering, I'll tell you!" He gets close to her, voice low as he speaks through grit teeth with anger lividly expressed in his tense body.

"Yes, thank you, I'd appreciate that." River sounds as chipper as before, not at all bothered by his change in tone; didn't read too much into it, Oncoming Storm and all...known to have fits every now and again.

"Talking to her about you!" The Doctor stammers a few times before he gets it out completely, River starts to beam happily and Amy pokes her head around from the other side—her ginger hair highlighted a duller red thanks to the flourescent green of the time rotor.

"Oh yeah? Was it good stuff?"

The Doctor was stumped, even leaned back on his heels as he puffed out his cheeks and looked up at the ceiling—or, wherever it ended, he could never tell...the TARDIS liked to change it from time to time and now it replicated what the Time Vortex must look like outside right now.

"Yeah, suppose so. She just wanted to know who you were..." The Doctor shrugged, much calmer now though he doesn't mention anything else that happened; _they_ didn't need to know and he hoped Rose wouldn't say or do anything to make them suspicious.

"Ah, well, what about her? Aren't you going to tell me about her since we're, clearly, speaking indirectly?" River asks which somehow causes the nerves in the Doctor's body to coil even more.

"Just a London girl, nothing too special about her."

"Wasn't that important worth mentioning, he says." Amy points with her thumb at the Doctor from behind as she walks past, starting up the stairs until both of her hands take hold of one side of the railing where she turns around, hair flying around her head like a saucer, when she stared at the Doctor.

"Is that so? I'll see about that." River huffs with a toss of her eyes, brushing past the Doctor's shoulder and rests a hand upon Amy's shoulder as she proceeds past, entering the heart of the TARDIS once more and explores elsewhere...many more rooms to find, many more to discover the secrets of!

* * *

"So what's this about her not being important, eh?" Amy asks, one hand now perched on the railing with a quirked eyebrow. More than a week may have gone past but Amy wasn't, _wouldn't_, be so quick to brush off and accept the Doctor's indolent confession. "Doesn't look it." Amy concurs with herself and takes exaggerated steps toward one of the chairs on the hexagonal platform, waiting for the Doctor's response, as she overlaps her arms across her small chest.

Her eyes, a strange mixture of forest green and muddy brown, follow the path the Doctor takes as he half-heartedly jogs up the stairs toward the six-panels that very nearly blocked him from view. He's silent and his eyes are cast down, looking at everything but the stern, unrelenting face of Amelia Pond; though he doesn't mention it, he is ashamed of the rubbish he tried to forge into Amy and Rory's minds especially now that they know _everything_ there is about _all_ of his companions.

What made Rose so special? He's fallen in love with other companions before.

While contemplating, the Doctor plays with the many protruding items on the panels and sets the coordinates for a new destination.

_Why hadn't he mentioned her_? Why did he make up such a dirty excuse? _Busy_, he's busy and his thoughts won't slow down enough for him to process anything, his thoughts won't allow him that privilege.

"Too much," he mutters beneath his breath and his posture becomes erect when he senses Amy rush to stand near him, wanting him to repeat. It's careless and haphazardly gushed out, almost all mushed into one word, but he can't bring himself to stop which is very typical of him, "Too much pain."

Amy purses her lips into a taut line, indifferent to his response as she goes through a list in her mind—validating his response—then nods once, satisfied.

"Where's Rory?" The Doctor finally understands what the gap in the room is due to and looks up from the panels, scanning the room for the Roman.

"Bed."

"Couldn't sleep?" The Doctor turns to face Amy now, feeling brave enough to withstand her unforgivingly persistent stare. "Out here, away from those bunk beds, where you're _supposed_ to sleep on one bed and he sleeps on the _other_."

"No."

"Why?"

"Rose."

* * *

"What do you mean '_why_'?"

"_Why_ would he go off to bed because of Rose? What's she got to do with him?"

"Turn around, you twat!" Amy points at the blonde woman standing at the top of the stairs, looking at him until he turns around, moving her eyes only to look over his shoulder at Rose in a different outfit. The Doctor vaguely remembered the outfit, skirt overalls and tights paired with a muted lavender and boots. Dressed almost like she had when they met Queen Victoria; a smile starts to push up at one corner of his mouth, remembering their petty bet despite the level of danger (which he thought to be manageable).

"Rose." The Doctor says, trying not to sound...taken aback by her sudden appearance; it was as if he expected her to disappear, his own way of ignoring his guilt, he supposes.

"Doctor, Amy." Rose says normally, and steps down the stairs. "Where's Rory?"

"Bed." Amy repeats.

"Why?"

Amy, throwing her arms up in protest and agitation, groans blatantly as she turns around and walks around the console until she was to the Doctor's side, at an angle.

"What, can you two read each other's minds?"

"Just about." Rose pipes up, happy.

"Napping? I don't know, he just said he was going to retire..."

"Ah, well, he can't do that! I was just getting started!" The Doctor whines, stomping to Amy with his shoulders sagging forward until his hands push down onto her shoulders, bringing her to his eye level. "I was going to take us all to Athist, a small little planet about the size of Pluto in your solar system but it's just a massive beach! Of course there are plots, all that good stuff..."

"And they're atheists?" Amy asks, eyebrows nearly coming together from thought.

"You would be surprised at the small amount of wars they have." The Doctor informs them, subtly implying Earth has had so many reasons with the main reason due to religion though he doesn't directly say that. "Of course, there are five-hundred people on there...just about, lovely little place! Great hospitality!"

* * *

Eleven has a wide, gaping grin on his face when he observes their stunned facial expressions, even River which was a sight to see! Rose had been the first to step out, definitely _not_ amused by the never ending sight of tall trees that were so densely close together it was like a can full of packed sardines! The further she looked, the darker and deeper it seemed together which made her curious but from her experience on coastlines, this was nowhere near the appeal of a beach unless of course the people of Athist had a different take on what a beach is supposed to look like.

When the Doctor manages to stop gazing at all of their faces, mainly bemused and conflicted, he turns to face what they're seeing and lets out a compressed sigh, miffed.

"Is this their adaption of a beach?" Rose asks sarcastically, not moving to look at him and instead looks up at the sky, noticing the darkness and finally...feeling the heavy humidity.

"How close are we to the sun?"

"Look, do you see how dark it is? We'll be dead before we can even find any sign of life!"

"It's pitch black! How far are we from the _nearest_ star?" Rory pushes his spectacles further up the bridge of his large nose,

"Should I stay? Should I go?" River contemplates aloud which causes the Doctor to panic, pinning his hands onto her arms, covering the gadget strapped around her wrist.

"No!"

"Sweetie, I was only teasing! I've been here for hardly a _day_ and I'm just starting to have fun! You think I'd leave this?" River arches an expectant eyebrow at him before pulling her arm free of his surprisingly light grip and waves him off, stepping off into the first clearing her eyes spotted.

"Something tells me this isn't a very good idea to go wandering off! What do you think, Doctor?" Amy looks to the Doctor for guidance.

"Hey...where..." Rory spins around in a complete three-sixty, slowly processing everything he can see to the best of his ability then walks a tight perimeter around the TARDIS. "Where...Amy, can you see River?"

"No...didn't she just go into that clearing, though?" Amy points toward the direction River went but much to their disadvantage, River had gone a few more meters to the left and was now shouting for them to come and see what she's found...an unbothered skeleton of some abnormal-looking creature; sure wasn't anything similar to a human.

But they were deaf to her.

The trees transformed the slightest bit, moving in whichever direction they pleased that typically goes unnoticed by any foreign.

"This isn't Athist..." the Doctor manages after a while, mocking Rory's movements from earlier as he used his sonic to get some kind of reading only to get nothing in return. Which was...odd.

"River?"

"River!"

"River? Can you hear us?"

"Should we go find her?" Everyone remaining except for the Doctor crowded together, having a group discussion.

"If we want to leave, yeah."

Little did they know, the once cozily spacious clearing the TARDIS had materialized in was only decreasing in size but the change went unnoticed for it was gradual, constantly moving—concealing any lifeforms in hopes to use their decaying bodies as a way of bringing life onto this planet, unknown even to the Doctor.

"Doctor? What do you think?" It's Amy who gets his attention, even steps toward him once and snaps her fingers at him while he was distracted, making faces at his sonic device—disgruntled that it wouldn't _tell_ him anything, no readings, _nothing_.

"I think...well, we find River and leave. What more do you want?"

"Okay, all right..." Rory was starting to become agitated, feeling uncomfortably crowded and he didn't know why, he had enough room to move comfortably about...gives his leg a shake and jump around.

"Do we split up and meet back here when we find her?" Rose asks, watching him return his gaze to his screwdriver as if she said nothing. "Doctor?" She says after a while, waving her hand in front of his face. "Good plan, yeah?"

"Brilliant plan." The Doctor nods and ushers them off as he stands near the TARDIS, bickering at the ship, demanding to know what was going on with his device...why was it being so wacky all of a sudden? It's not often that it doesn't do that...

Oh, right...it's been awhile since he's encountered anything wooden...well, if he can remember correctly. Doesn't happen all too happen.

Doesn't do wood.

"Bloody..." When he looks up, everyone's gone...scattered. Busy bees, they are. "Rose?" He calls out, running off into the thickest part of the trees, the two trunks coming together the further off he went, calling their names.

Slowing to a walk, the Doctor bends and supports himself by leaning his hands against his knees and looking at everything he could without turning completely around. He probably wasn't having as bad a time as the others with their poor human eyesight, they were blind compared to him...to him it was nearly daylight but still dark enough to be one-ish hours before dawn!

"Rose? Amy? Rory... River?" He calls out, hearts constricting as he becomes panic-stricken. How long had he been focused on his sonic? Bloody thing, so inadequate... How far off were they? Why weren't they shouting back?

Sauntering steadily now, the Doctor tosses his sonic up and catches it continuously with one hand, beginning to whistle a tune from his home planet, Gallifrey. It's been awhile since he's been alone with silence, all by himself, with no around to make it surrender on its knees. Their company made him forget how lonely he truly is, the only one of his kind...thoughts unaccompanied by the blur of others, all alone with his traffic of thoughts...

"Rose?" He calls out, her name this time.

She could save him from falling, they all could but she was there, with them, now.

When he hears rustling, his attention immediately refocused, he takes a large side-step and hides behind an old tree, back getting the brunt of the splinters and shedding bark of the trunk.

"Rose?" He whispers, pausing when he hears the rustling get louder and much closer than it was before. His hearts both pummel madly against his ribcage, his eyes surveying everything around him. It was not knowing that made him afraid, the lack of preparation and unknown coming to tackle him in relative darkness.

The next thing all he can feel is a weird sensation of being grabbed everywhere all at once by prickly things that prodded his skin and drew blood, tiny pinpoints of needles sticking his skin...the pain worsening when he felt his loafer-covered feet lose contact with the clover-cluttered grass. He had been hoisted into the air and not too soon after, before he could squirm around enough to get a good gander at his attackers, he's knocked out...trapped in R.E.M. sleep faster than he's ever been.

Rose's name is the last thing he's heard whispering, trailing off into an air of tolerable snoring.


	16. Doppelgängers

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

It's light now, the sky nearly white...a cross between pearl and champagne... she's seen that brightness come up a few times whenever she'd anchor her head back to gaze up at the sky, past the points of what would resemble massive pine trees, densely compacted, back on planet Earth during her brief travels to America. When she looked down again, eyes following each foot that fell in front of her path of vision, stray pine cones would be lying about...fragrancing the air around her much like at home...

Funny, that word, _home_. It meant so many things to her now... Powell Estate, the TARDIS, _Earth_, Pete's World, even the Doctor...and... His clone. She created a nest to burrow inside of in each of those places, embedding memories of herself and taking a fondness to each that she wasn't quite sure which felt more like home than the others.

Yet she prevailed onwards, not sure if she cared much anymore to search for River, certain that she was about as lost as anyone used to bustling city life suddenly pushed into nothing occupied with but trees. When she turned around, retracing her steps which wasn't very hard since the majority of the ground was like pliable sand that was stuck between dryness and wetness, and tried to reach the clearing the TARDIS had appeared in...she found herself sensing she had journeyed too far past home. So she began to meander aimlessly, searching but with no success, as her eyes scanned and bounced around...never once did she spot the shift in the trees.

"Rose!" A familiar voice breathes out with enthusiasm, breathless, and when Rose whips around, blonde hair flying out behind her before hitting her shoulders, Rose starts to grin. "Blimey, I am glad to see you!"

"...Did...did you find River? What about the others?" Rose asks, peering over his shoulder, getting on her toes and leaning from one foot to the other to get a better view of the distance. "Where's the TARDIS? I must've circled this area at least fifty times now...and the days seem to be really short here..." Rose mentions, not at all minding the closing distance between them both until she can feel her chest rise against his; she began to feel giddy and uneasy at the closeness, a nervous smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

The feeling of paranoia and worry come over her but she doesn't recognize it as she should and instead pulls it back from the forefront of her mind, reeling the concern away when their lips met. Next thing she knew, her back was pressed up against one of the trees, and when his lips retracted and sought skin elsewhere, Rose looked around. A reasonably small clearing had formed and she swore a clearing wasn't there before.

"What if River sees us?"

"Oh, don't worry about her! Don't you remember what I told you last night?"

"Yeah..." Suddenly Rose lets out a nervous laugh as it tingled in her stomach, her abdomen clenching when quick flashes of last night came to mind...she turned beet red.

* * *

"Amy!" The Doctor exclaimed and jumped to his feet, hands coming to cup either side of her indifferent face as he looked at her with such childish happiness. It was almost pure. "Have you seen River?" A slight nod causes his hands to bob up and down, feeling the movement of her head. "Why isn't she with you, then? And Rory? Where's funny, quirky Rory?"

At this, his hands drop back down to his sides as he turns around and observes their surroundings.

With a quick glance back, missing the exaggerated twitch of his found friend, Amy, as she momentarily switched back to the younger version of herself, the version the Doctor first met. His mind is focused on their surroundings, not too worried to find anything deranged about Amy...couldn't really be bothered at the moment, so with that he waved his hand and motioned her to follow.

"Come along, Pond."

* * *

Bleary-eyed and flaccidly limp even as he tries to rise and stand on his legs, Rory stumbles back a good number of times with his hands often coming to his forehead and eyes. When the annoying film cleared after enough blinks, he began to feel dizzy and started to notice the offensive stench—poorly infused chemical with sulfur... bloody hell, it was really beginning to smell like an intense batch of rotten eggs. Hurdling himself forward, toward the closest tree to looked to be a little farther before, Rory heaved any contents from his stomach onto the tree bark, some of it dripped onto the ground.

As Rory drew in heavy breaths, wiping away any escaped tears with one hand, as he tried to collect himself and during this, if he stared long enough at the ground, he began to see how the sand pushed up against the tree as his other hand—which remained pressed against the tree for momentary support—began to slip gradually.

Blinking several times, thinking it was only his eyes playing tricks on him again, he looks at the ground and thinks nothing of it.

"Amy?" He calls when he felt stable enough to stand on his own without support and not double over with his insides coming out. Why had they separated? She wanted to go one way and he wanted to go another, a strange pull grabbing at his left backside which caused him to stop and turn around somewhat, eyes surveying everything but all he could see was trees, forever expanding darkness, and sand. Amy persisted onward, the last he saw of her when he looked over at her was her arms being thrown up in frustration while she shouted something he couldn't understand.

He yelled back, frustrated too by that point.

Now here he was, waking up after being knocked out by whatever, calling for Amy.

* * *

"River?!" Amy calls out, cupping her hands over her mouth as a way to carry the sound further and make it louder. She takes small steps, little paces in one direction then another, as she walked with no specific direction. It's still dark, her field of vision narrow and decreasing...she was started to feel tired, and a black veil was beginning to blanket her eyes until she'd blink and it would go away temporarily only to seep back.

"What, mummy dearest?" River approaches, walking with swagger.

"River!" Amy lets out a sigh of relief, elated to see her. "Where've you been? We've been out here, looking for _you_!"

"Didn't you hear me?" River walked right up to Amy, so close that their noses nearly touched. Amy, needless to say, felt intimidated and wanted—_needed_—her space. "I was calling you all over—"

Amy collapses to the ground and River lowers her arm, flipping hair back over her shoulder as she came to her knees and studied Amy's face.

"You always looked so very peaceful when you slept..."

* * *

"You lot! Come over here!" River starts to take scans of the once-being and much to her disliking, gets no results.

"You rang?" The Doctor came running up, the others—minus Amy—followed as well.

"Look at this...it's a...a...well, I certainly haven't come across it during my days of study."

"Doesn't look human." Rory chipped in with a shrug.

"Yes, thank you, Rory, for that much needed input." The Doctor slaps Rory's shoulder before bending at his knees beside River. "I don't think the TARDIS would mind if we bothered with the remains of something not human, do you?"

"Suppose not." Rose pipes in, leaning forward a bit and the Doctor looks back at her with a sly smirk, darkness looming over them all.

River, nerves prickling along her spine as she tried to misplace the spasm, stands upright now and brushes off any particles of anything from her pants. When she looked at all three of them she got an eerie sort of feeling.

Something was wrong, very wrong, about all of this...even them...


	17. Timelines

I'm American so if you spot anything that seems out of place, please let me know.

**I do not own DW nor am I affiliated with it. I am not seeking to make profit from this, this merely is just me writing for the benefit of me and others. No infringement meant at all.**

* * *

Different timelines.

Not _all_ of them know that.

Some stood around, thinking it was now light while others are surrounded by darkness.

Trees moved, trying to permanently separate the group so they'd die alone and never be found.

Their deaths would be quick, the trees would move in close enough until they were trapped—move in close enough in order to suffocate them and crush their bodies like being in a trapped room with two opposing walls that moved toward each other.

Then they would return to their original position, leaving the body to rot where it lies as it provides new soil for their ground...another birth of life for a tree. They'd remain dormant until someone else comes along, perhaps mistaking coordinates like the Doctor did. Perhaps not.

Two caught on that they (the trees) were aware of and constructed ghosts of past victims—dressed in their current visitor's skin, mimicking them and everything that they are. But they are ghosts, solid ghosts, that aren't perfect...completely occupied with as much glitches as the first, primitive, computers. The Doctor was a fun one to recreate, the ghosts realized when they became independent of the trees...their creators, the hands on their shoulders bringing them back to have a little fun after resting for so long.

Eleven lives the Doctor experienced, he was a much more interesting target than the other three that walked around in search of a hopeless psychopath.

For added playfulness, after dabbling in the darkness of their guests minds, they malfunctioned to become someone else and luck seemed to be on their side because their playmates hadn't taken official notice.

One of the three women, the blonde one with large teeth and a set of large lips, seemed to be basking in sadness and a certain infinity that she was not yet made aware of. While she snogged who she supposed to be the Doctor, falling to the ground in the process, the creature transformed, having more fun than what was intended.

When Rose parted, trying to calm herself down, she had looked away before she opened eyes and when she had, wanting to marvel over his face, her breath stopped just as her chest constricted.

"You always liked this incarnation of me best, Rose." He sneers, sounding uglier than he wanted it to. "I was younger and handsome, even more so than the one that you first met...oh, and I had a head full of hair! Not ginger but still, hair you could grab onto. And a wicked smile and crazy eyes, I think you liked all of that, didn't you? You could play with me, I wasn't as serious—"

"Shut it." Rose retorts, squirming beneath as she struggled to free herself of his weight.

Flashes burst in her mind, memories she'd rather not see again. Happy ones, sad ones, angry ones. Then she's confronted with John, _her_ Doctor, _her_ mate for life...gone. Then she feels it, the regret overpowering her like explosive anger causing anyone to become tunnel-visioned—she saw the Doctor as his current self and her, in her bed, nude against each other...it was a violation to his memory.

She said she _loved_ him, after fooling around, after becoming empty during an experience she can hardly remember!

When Rose wrestles herself free, stumbling to her feet with her hands tapping the ground often to regain composure, she took off one direction and hoped for the best. Hoped she would run into the Doctor, the real one...


End file.
